to think undergraduates shouldn't be routinely given reader cards for the British Library?

[OTheHugeManatee]

Yes, I know that it's one of the UK's only copyright libraries. Yes, I know it's a public resource. Yes I know, accessibility, widening availability, yadda yadda. Yes, I'm probably being a mardy old trout.

But since they changed the rules to allow undergraduates to get BL reader cards, it's become overrun with entitled adolescents. Half the time you can't even get a seat.

I'm a mature student, doing postgrad study part-time at some distance from my institution, and I don't have a university library to work in. I have very small windows of time between work and other commitments when I can do library research for essays. The BL is pretty much the only resource within reasonable travelling distance from me where I can access the books I need and work quietly for a few hours. So when I turn up at the BL and find it swarming with people who could be somewhere else, and that it's impossible to get a seat, it pisses me off.

It's one thing if they are doing a special research project on material which is only available at the BL. But for ordinary undergrad stuff, why? Universities have their own libraries FFS. Can't these whippersnappers go and chew gum and flirt in those?

My university library is appalling, never has a useful book, full of old, out-dated cellotaped together crap. I went to do an essay in cyberpsychology and the newest books on the subject were from the mid 1990's.

why dont you just study at home? the library isnt just for PHD students

When I was at Cambridge, undergraduates were allowed to use the UL but you couldn't take books out (or maybe only 3rd years could?) Mostly, you found your books (if you were lucky) and and used them in the library, propped on those sweet little wooden desk-lecturn things. Sometimes you had to request them and collect them off a little trolley with a little slip in.

[ramble]
[love libraries]
[devastated they are all closing]

No, YANBU. But the people you should be annoyed with are all the vice-principals who think that they need to demonstrate 'successfully managing change' by chucking out all the books.

Oh well, we don't need them any more, it's all online now, don't you know? Maybe you can just do your work in a coffee-shop with wifi?

My home doesn't have as many books as a very large library, NorwegainMoon, does yours?

Norwegian I do, as much as possible. Wherever possible (ie if it's not out of print or insanely expensive) I buy my own primary texts, as I'm likely to need them again and again.

The problem is that when I'm writing essays I often need to access journal articles, sometimes quite old or abstruse. Apart from the Bodleian in Oxford the BL is the only place in the UK you can do that. I just don't believe the same is true of 75% of the undergrads in the BL.

Oh dear, after NorwegianMoon's comment mine looks like it might have been serious.

It wasn't.

so photocopy the pages you need and do the work at home? if your cant find the info you need in books at home thats the reason under grads are there aswell-esp if you go to some posh uni where years 1 and 2 cant take out books (is that a joke by the way?)

anyway surely most of the graduates on here will say 1st yr students are probebly using yr2 books to get higher grades in their yr 1 modules and essay? thats what we all did!

YANBU (puts on stern Librarian whisper, polishes specs and checks state of grey bun). I've never understood why the BL decided to open up to undergraduates in this way. They don't need to use the resources there unless they are writing a final year dissertation and surely their universities receive funding for their libraries based on undergraduate numbers, amongst other criteria?
BL isn't the sort of place where you'd get multiple copies of a standard student textbook available on short loan, which you would get in a university library, so for the undergraduates it is merely a rather better class of study area.

pardon my ignorance but is this library in London?

There are copyright laws about how much of a book you photocopy, and doing that takes about as long as using the books to study with!

Paper is so 20th century...

When they BSFed the school I used to work in they showed us the plans for the English Department and there was no real cupboard space. When we queried this we were told it would be a 'paperless' environment. An English department. Bless 'em.

I teach postgraduate programmes and we dont encourage the use of texts as they are so out of date. Our students have athens passwords so a lot of their literature can be accessed online.

I. of course, get free texts anyway.

But geez, what subject area? The humanities wouldn't use set texts at PG level either. But we do use old books, editions, criticism that may be very 'out of date' but of historiographical interest, journals from the C19th... in my discipline we're still dependent on very old editions of primary texts because those are the only ones that exist. None of that is online, and even when it is on something like archive.org it's much harder to use than in hard copy.

And I am an old fogey about thingslike this, but I don't think I concentrate properly on stuff I read on screen. Too easy to just flick over to MN email...

geez Yes, it is

Norwegian My original point was that I have quite limited time to do library-based research. If I'm ordering the 1957 Proceedings of the Abstruse Pointyhead Society vol. 1 from the BL stacks, there's probably a 5 page article in it that I need. Often you're not allowed to photocopy journal stuff, or there aren't photocopying resources, or you have to order the photocopying. So I have to read it there.

What I want to be able to do is sit down, read the articles I need, make the notes and quotes I need and then bugger off. I don't have all day, every day to study like an undergrad as I work four days a week to self-fund through my course. But as often as not you waste an hour queueing for the cloakroom, another hour trying to find a blimming seat, and then get distracted every ten seconds by some poxy teenager conducting a text message relationship behind you.

In theory, the BL is the ideal resource as it's a copyright library and the texts should be available as it's not a lending library. However it is so full of undergrads, typically reading material that isn't obscure or hard to come by, that often it's impossible to get a seat. I think it's bloody inconsiderate of them.

I totally agree with BuggerAndArse (great name by the way) that rather than grumbling at the yoof like the mardy old trout I am, we should be cursing the VCs who think 'modernisation' means 'books are obsolete' and hence replace libraries with, I don't know, holodecks or 'business centres' or whatever. But I don't think it's totally U to want to access material you can't get anywhere else, and not be swamped with people treating the place as a glorified Starbucks.

Aaaand...breathe.

geezmyfeetarecold? What kind of course are you teaching? Databases have a very limited selection of monographs (still not enough published on-line).

Without a reader card you do not have access to databases in the BL. You must be in the right room using the right computer and you cannot download the material. It is actually much more restrictive for electronic material than most Universities (including the worst ones). It is fantastic for books and other materials. All depends on what you are looking for.

A PhD student should also be able to enter many other institutions with very good resources in London, not only the BL.

I do modules on ancient philosophy, written texts are not out of date!

My subject areas are medical Ohbugger

Thanks manatee

The on-line stuff is amazing though. I remeber the days when if you wanted a journal article and your lib didn;t stock it, you would fill in a form that would be sent off to a lib that did stock it and months later a photocopy would appear (and if you were lucky it would be the right pages, or the right year, or the right article), now you just access it on line.....How cool is that? But, like you OhB&A, I studied old texts and needed access to stuff that isn't really available outside the BL (that's my excuse and I am sticking to it!)

"so photocopy the pages you need and do the work at home?"

1. The BL charge 20p a page (not an opening -- that's two pages!) for photocopying.

2. There is plenty of stuff that someone doing a postgraduate degree, in which you have to do original research, would need to use that the BL doesn't allow you to photocopy.

3. And besides, with fair use copyright laws one is only allowed to photocopy a single chapter, or 10%, whichever is less. Not great if you need to read the whole book.

It's really not practical or indeed possible to photocopy stuff and do it at home, NorwegianMoon.

"now you just access it on line.....How cool is that?"

If your library pays for the journal subscription. If not, you have to go and find a hard copy somewhere, old style.

By the way, I use the BL pretty often. Has not happened often I could not get a seat and NEVER, EVER I have seen anybody misbehaving in any way.

The Uni I work at does (I accept others don't) - I also know I was lucky in having access to three Uni libs and BL when I did my PhD (my own, DP's, my dads)

Photocopying wouldn't work for my students, or for me.

But, honest to God, I swear a lot of the undergraduates aren't there for the noble reasons you're assuming. I know some of them are there because they think it is cool to be seen there, not because they need special books their libraries don't have.

How do I know this? Well, because if I can find those books in the university library, I should imagine they can too!