University being unreasonable?

[WithIcePlease]

NC as this could be indentified easily
V small university - maybe 120 in DD's year, only does 1 subject
She has been told that no deadlines will change which she is alright with and that no difference will be applied to marking schemes for her final degree.
She was in tears this morning. She would normally be spending 6 hours a day in a London library looking up and reading sources for her dissertation. She usually has a substantial bibliography for her essays etc which she will not have. All the libraries are closed and it's too late to change her topic for her dissertation.
As her subject is an older one not modern (think medieval or Victorian), there are not available sources online.
She has worked so hard and may have got a first under normal circs.
She has emailed and that is the response she got - no change.
I don't know what other universities doing? Is hers out of step?
It seems very unreasonable to me
Any ideas please?

the library seems to have e resources - there are cross library resources or perhaps she should look online at museums & art galleries

I've shared this thread with her.

RoyalAlfred
They are not archival sources - just books
Her topic is 'mysticism and the occult in late Victorian Art' - looking at changes in people's spirituality post industrial revolution with different spiritual ideas emerging over the UK

I agree she should get ahold of her tutor.
One thing she should request is that she be able to submit some kind of memo regarding extenuating circumstances so that the marking can be adjusted to take into account the lack of access to primary sources.
If they want a dissertation, fair enough, but they then cannot go and mark her down due to a lack of archival or primary sources. They have to agree to achievable parameters for her research when she cannot access a physical library.
Or maybe the university has enough influence that they can arrange for her to access a specific archive or art collection by appointment where she can work alone/with social distancing . Closed to the public might not mean 100% closed all the time.

Is she at the University of London? If so, they have decent access to the Senate Library e-resources: london.ac.uk/senate-house-library/our-collections/databases-and-eresources/eresources-a-z

This is good for Art History: guides.library.yale.edu/artsdatabases

And this: www.walpolesociety.org.uk/art-history/art-history.shtml

It's a degree in history of art

Ah, I'm a historian, not an art historian.

I suppose she still has access to jstor and other online journals? Google Books and archive.org are also useful resources. Plus the websites of major museums and galleries.

If it's Victorian, the Victorian Web is a hub with links to articles and resources on a variety of subjects, including the visual arts.

Also if it's Victorian, either through the university library, or possibly through your local library website, she should be able to get access to the Times and the Illustrated London News digital archives for reviews of exhibitions, obituaries of artists, etc. Plus the British Library Newspapers site for other 19th century newspapers and periodicals.

(Have spent a lot of time at the Senate House Library myself in the past!)

There are bound to be journal articles, e-books, google books, theses, online versions of books / , articles on Scribd or Researchgate.net, etc available online surely? Any vital texts second hand on ebay? Downloads / links from academics' personal webpages? Some academic publishers have recently made more titles available online too as university libraries are closed. Has she looked at "related articles" / "cited by" / the bibliographies of works she's read already? Are her classmates able to share sources that have found?

This is a fairly common issue and generally with a few tweaks to search terms and more creative searches, students tend to find quite a lot of relevant sources. If she has already tried all the above, she should contact her supervisor for suggestions.

The London Library is offering a digital membership. It is usually very expensive to be a member but I am assuming the digital membership is more affordable. No idea if they have anything she needs but could be worth exploring?

Many publishers are offering free access to digital copies of their books in response to the crisis. CUP, Springer and Pearson are just a few I can recall who are doing this. If she knows what she needs, it should be easy enough to find the details from the publisher’s website.

I might be able to help a bit more, I'm a theologian specialising in spirituality. That's not my time period but I could give it a go x

If for example OP, this institution happened to be part of a larger university it might be worth seeing what other colleges were doing and try and replicate that.

So please with these ideas

As someone writing their dissertation on gothic literature, there are loads of sources online for historical stuff.

They can take some finding but stuff is out there. Google Scholar is really good.

Given that graduations would normally be in July, when is she due to submit her dissertation? At this point I'd expect that the literature review and any other chapters requiring library resources would be well in place given that submission would be fairly soon for undergraduates. Is there perhaps something else going on?

@WithIcePlease if you send me her subject I can try and send what I can me & my mum have ba/ma in art and have a lot of books like crazy amount. Happy to scan or photo and ask around for sources.

User1472
No other issues. Never missed a deadline or anything and no personal stuff. She has about half. Had intended to use latter part of March and all of April to do more research before submitting in mid- late May

@Nameisthegame
Can she pm you?

It's Pamela Colman Smith watercolours and her interaction with spiritualism and her interactions with Yeats and the hermetic order of the golden dawn

Hi.
I’m an academic Librarian. My uni has similar subjects and although there are good eresources (JSTOR in particular) and she will be allowed to request from the British Library’s online resources, even when shut, she simply won’t be able to do as good a job as she could have done with the print resources.

This is frustrating for her but her uni should be making allowances for this. Mine is. There was so much pressure put on us to open and staff our library. I’m still getting complaints from students and to be honest it fucks me right off. Along the lines of “we know the staff need to be safe but I need books”.

She can do this with online resources, it won’t be as good but I’d hope that will be taken into account on marking, if it isn’t in writing then she needs to lobby academics.

archive.org/details/modernismfeminin0000pyne/page/58

This might be of use?

Her own advisor or tutor is going to be more familiar with her particular subject and should be able to offer advice on how to obtain materials or how to adjust the dissertation to work with what is available. A general administrator won’t understand the realities of every academic path.

Aren’t dissertations usually on final drafts or already handed in by now?

What the pp said: my department has sent out details of subject-specific, academically acceptable online resources and alternative research methods, for students to use for dissertation in lieu of face to face methods. Should she be unable to find appropriate resources to replace paper / physical sources, she really should be emailing her supervisor / posting on her VLE to ask for suggestions on how to find suitable sources.

J-STOR (academic research paper archive online) has made access free for a couple of weeks afaik (was told this, not checked it myself) so she could certainly look through there as a start point. If she genuinely can't find info she could legitimately put footnotes saying 'citation needed - source unavailable during COVID lockdown.' They'd have a bloody hard time arguing against that provided she genuinely can't access relevant info online. Bear in mind that loads of galleries and museums have opened up virtual tours. It's worth contacting their educational and archivist depts to see if they have any details they could help her with as they too may still be working at least part time from home.

If there is a Students Union, she should contact them. Most are very proactive in arguing for students’ needs and the more students that contact them about an issue, the more evidence it gives them to support their argument. Our university has issued a statement saying that circumstances will be taken into account at Exam Board, so if she has a personal tutor she should flag it up to them too, so that they can advocate on her behalf.

@WithIcePlease yeah no problem x