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Guidance on making the most of the library’s eBook collection.

I’ve been working in my role as Acquisitions Assistant, at Goldsmiths Library, for 2 years now. Prior to starting this role, I assumed I had a reasonable understanding of what eBooks are, and how they compare to print books and other online resources offered by an academic library.

I soon realised that eBook publishing is complex and getting the most out of the hosting websites’ features, or identifying licensing restrictions, is not always straightforward. I’ve written this blog post and an eBook License Guide to highlight some of the things I’ve discovered.

The role of the eBook has never been as fundamental, to the support of learning and research, as it has been during the pandemic. Though it would be unfair to expect online resources to resolve all the issues that arose from library closures, and limited access to physical collections, there have been significant problems with eBook provision, that ought to be rectified.

One critical issue is the cost of eBooks, which has been well documented over the past year. If you haven’t already, please read and sign the open letter asking the UK Government to investigate the practices of the academic eBook publishing industry. Some publishers have chosen to increase eBook prices during the pandemic, or only offer key texts to libraries as part of expensive subscription packages.

It is clear that most academic libraries prefer to purchase permanent (aka perpetual) licenses for specific eBooks, rather than paying for packages, which may have a few key texts bundled in with less popular or relevant titles. Another inescapable problem is that many titles, particularly those published before the 21^st century, have never been available as eBooks, and certain subject areas, such as art and design, offer limited availability for recent publications.

There is still a tremendous amount of content out there, and it is always worth checking the selection of open access eBooks, available free of charge, including the UCL Press collection. Goldsmiths’ students and staff also have access to eBooks via Senate House Library.

The Goldsmiths Library catalogue acts as a gateway to the available eBook collections, but the websites that host eBook content vary greatly in terms of layout, functionality and access restrictions. Some eBooks are laid out like print books, while others are viewed online as a continuous body of text.

You may have more experience of reading eBooks on an eReader, but academic eBooks are not always compatible with these devices. It may be necessary to download specific software and even then access to full eBook downloads are often time limited. More information on using the websites of the library’s main eBook providers, Proquest Ebook Central and VLeBooks can be found on the eBooks Libguide.

The eBooks available via these 2 providers, alongside EBSCO eBooks, will typically have some Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions, that may limit the number of users that can access a book at the same time, limit the loan length of a full download, or the percentage of the book that can be printed or copied.

Other websites, particularly those hosting content from university press publishers, offer fewer restrictions, and it is often possible to download the full eBook, in PDF format, to keep permanently. An excellent example of this is the Duke University Press collection, for which Goldsmiths Library offers access to all titles.

For reading list materials, it is always worth planning ahead as some eBooks, like their print siblings, will have limited availability at the times when they are most needed by other students on your course. Digitised versions of essential chapters may be available to download via the module’s online reading list. If your reading list specifies a chapter or section to read, it is also advisable to check if that part of the eBook can be downloaded, as a PDF, using the copy or print features on the hosting website.

For guidance on identifying the type of eBook license the library provides, and the restrictions of use, an eBook License Guide is now available on the library webpages. It can be a confusing and at times frustrating topic, so if you have any questions, or specific accessibility requirements, please get in touch with the library for additional support.

Nick Leigh

Useful legal guidance for all at Goldsmiths

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Goldsmiths started teaching Law in 2019. This means that our library is now stocked with a whole array of resources that could also be of interest to non-law students and staff.

One of those is Practical Law which is a tool that is used by lawyers when drafting legal documents etc. It contains guidance and templates for a whole raft of things that you might find useful for your own interests.

Often we only need legal advice in challenging times, but before you entrust your situation to a lawyer, you might like to read some of the guidance on Practical Law.

For example, there is a large section on Family Law, which includes, amongst other things, guidance on the law of divorce and the law relating to surrogacy and adoption leave. But many other aspects of Family Law are covered too.

In addition there are standard documents, which are guided templates, showing you things like how to write a will.

There is also guidance on things like inheritance tax and on your legal responsibilities after a death of a loved one, and creating lasting powers of attorney.

Law can be quite hard to navigate around, but Practical Law can be a really useful tool to help you navigate these issues. There is even help for the workplace, e.g. guidance on copyright in an education setting and a whole section on employment law.

You can find links to Practical Law and all our other legal databases on the Law subject guide.

Greg Bennett, Subject Librarian for Law

“Shakespeare in Lockdown” : a selection of e-resources

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Macbeth and Banquo meet the three witches on a heath; scene from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’. Painting after J.H. Füssli (Fuseli).. Credit: Wellcome Collection. Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

The Library subscribes to a number of databases and websites which include Shakespeare resources, such as filmed performances of productions and other related material.

Goldsmiths E-resources

ArtFilms

Artfilms is a video streaming service offering more than 5000 films from around the world for arts education and arts practitioners. Includes Shakespeare and other performances.

Box of Broadcasts

BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand service for education, with TV and radio programmes from over 65 Freeview channels.

Digital Theatre Plus

A performing arts resource featuring over 400 British theatre productions onscreen. Includes BBC, Globe and RSC Shakespeare productions, plus Manga Shakespeare graphic novels.

Drama Online

1500 play scripts in the core collection, plus Globe on Screen performances.

Literature Online (LION)

Literature Online includes Shakespeare criticism and Cambridge Companions to Shakespeare.

Routledge Performance Archive

Routledge Performance Archive provides a range of streamed video and audio footage from performance practitioners past and present, paired with relevant critical commentary.

Shakespeare Audio Plays

Arkangel Shakespeare audio versions of 38 plays, part of Literature Online (LION).

Shakespeare Survey Online

A yearbook of Shakespeare studies and criticism going back to 1948.

Theatre in Video

Theatre in Video contains hundreds of documentaries and performances of plays, including 160 Shakespeare related videos.

A Selection of Websites

The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (play texts) : http://shakespeare.mit.edu/

Globe Player : https://globeplayer.tv/free-content

National Theatre At Home : https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/nt-at-home

Royal Shakespeare Company : https://www.rsc.org.uk/

Shakespeare’s Globe : https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/

Shakespeare Online : http://www.shakespeare-online.com/

All Goldsmiths databases require institutional login for access. For further information and resources please see the Library’s Audio-Visual and Theatre Subject Guides.

Mark Preston, Subject Librarian for Education, English & Theatre

Open Access and the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Image by Jack Adamson as part of the UN COVID-19 Response, available on Unsplash

Open access to research has been in the news from the beginning of the SARS CoV2 – COVID-19 pandemic and it continues to be a hot topic as the world’s academics and universities grapple with the worldwide emergency. Open access can be hard to define; the best short definition is: “free availability and unrestricted use” (courtesy of open access publisher PLoS and author and academic Peter Suber). Much of the world’s research literature is not freely available and is heavily restricted by copyright, behind the barrier of expensive subscription paywalls, making global research collaboration difficult. Fred Flagg, from the Library’s Online Research Collections team, looks at the open access developments unfolding throughout the year so far in response to the pandemic.

Pre-prints

Open access pre-prints are getting tons of publicity, and rightly so as they enable researchers to share initial information rapidly. Pre-prints are early manuscripts of research outputs released to the public before peer review, and they are one of the founding elements of open access, with the Physics & Mathematics pre-print subject repository ArXiv freely available and widely used since 1991. The Biology subject repository BioRxiv was one of the first places to make available COVID-19 related preprints (starting January 2020). Since pre-prints and working papers (as they are called in the social sciences) are draft versions, it is risky to draw final conclusions from them (for more about pre-prints, see this short article by open access expert Danny Kingsley, and for a list of subject repositories see the Open Access Directory).

Pandemic open access

With most libraries closed (Goldsmiths Library resources available at this Goldsmiths LibGuide) many publishers have been quick to extend access to their journals and e-books which are under paywalls in ordinary times. This “pandemic open access” includes many offers of free access to research publications related to COVID-19. For one list see this Wellcome Trust announcement, and for an example of a subscription article now made freely available by its publisher, see Rhodes, Lancaster & Rosengarten 2020. There are also publishers providing expanded access to e-books. For one list of COVID-19 vendor e-book access, see this list by University Information Policy Officers. Many of these publisher access offers are likely to be temporary, so it is debatable if they count as open access, although “pandemic open access” is still an improvement over paywalls. Also temporarily, additional large scale open access to digitised books has been made possible by not-for-profit organisations The Hathi Trust and, not without controversy, The Internet Archive’s National Emergency Library (available worldwide, despite the name).

Goldsmiths Research Online open access during the COVID-19 pandemic

By contrast, anything that is available in Goldsmiths Research Online (GRO, https://research.gold.ac.uk) is available permanently, and copyright and permissions for each item are confirmed by the Online Research Collections team in the Library (also known as the GRO team). Academics at Goldsmiths have been writing and publishing widely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are adding these pandemic-related items to GRO with the keyword “COVID-19”, and a keyword search currently returns 24 items (including Rhodes, Lancaster & Rosengarten 2020 above, Will Davies in the London Review of Books, Angela McRobbie in the Verso Books blog, and several articles in Discover Society to name just a few). This number will increase as more is published, and although it is not always possible to provide an open access version, GRO has made several of these available to all by obtaining permissions from authors and publishers. Of the 24 items tagged with “COVID-19” in GRO, 12 of these have full text copies available now, and more will become available as publisher embargo periods expire in 12 to 24 months.

Library databases for Theatre productions

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ytkoks https://www.flickr.com CC BY 2.0

The Library subscribes to a number of audio-visual databases which include filmed performances of Theatre productions and other Theatre-related material. Please feel free to have a look at the following:

ArtFilms :

https://www-artfilms-digital-com.gold.idm.oclc.org/

Artfilms-Digital is a video streaming service offering more than 5000 films from around the world for arts education and arts practitioners. Includes Shakespeare and other performances.

Box of Broadcasts :

https://learningonscreen.ac.uk/ondemand

BoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand service for education, with TV and radio programmes from over 65 Freeview channels.

Digital Theatre Plus :

https://www.digitaltheatreplus.com/user

An integrated online performing arts resource featuring recent British theatre productions onscreen, study guides and teaching materials. Includes over 400 filmed productions.

Drama Online :

https://www-dramaonlinelibrary-com.gold.idm.oclc.org/

1500 play scripts plus Globe on Screen performances. Temporarily extended until 31^st May to include 3000 plays and all audio-visual content, including BBC, National Theatre and RSC productions.

Film Platform :

https://www-filmplatform-net.gold.idm.oclc.org/universities/goldsmiths-college-library/

This collection is curated by film experts and academics to showcase meaningful documentaries of social, political and cultural importance by some of the world’s top international filmmakers.

Routledge Performance Archive :

https://www-routledgeperformancearchive-com.gold.idm.oclc.org/

Routledge Performance Archive provides exclusive access to a range of streamed video and audio footage from performance practitioners past and present, paired with relevant critical commentary.

Theatre in Video :

https://video-alexanderstreet-com.gold.idm.oclc.org/channel/theatre-in-video

Theatre in Video: Volume I contains hundreds of videos, including documentaries and definitive performances of the world’s most important plays, and covers a wide range of 20th century theatre history.

All items require institutional login for access. For further information and resources please see the Library’s Audio-Visual and Theatre Subject Guides.

Written by Mark Preston, Subject Librarian for Education, English & Theatre

Special Collections: Fascism in London, Soviet Cinema and Russian Avant-Garde Artists

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Nazhrat Iqbal was a Special Collections & Archives Intern over the summer, part of the Interns on Campus initiative.

The Special Collections and Archives has a wide selection of resources, covering many different subjects that is open to all students, no matter what your degree or studies may be.

There were many topics I enjoyed exploring while working in the archives but as a student of sociology, I was naturally curious about the papers on Fascism by Victor Seidler, who also discussed sexuality, anarchism, the political climate of Chile in 1973, etc. These papers highlighted Fascism in London; I find this particularly interesting as while studying this topic in sociology, fascism is always tied to countries like Russia, Nazi Germany or Mussolini’s Italy that are all historic for its totalitarianism but hasn’t been explored in smaller and less obvious communities like London.

Siedler had collected a number of Race Today Magazines which offered different experiences of People of Colour, telling stories of the racism they suffered. I was very curious about how Fascism impacted the South-Asian communities, a community I grew up in and am a member of. It’s not often that archives would have any history or material referencing this race group and I was eager to see how the community has changed and by what influences. The magazines informed the discriminations South-Asian people experienced at work, being restricted to cheap labour and excluded from better skilled and higher paying work, which was unsurprising given the works of fascism. The magazines also noted Race Relations Act was not developed to prohibit racial discrimination, however it was passed when Black members of the US community reacted with violence to their own abuse and demanded change be made to their treatment. The government only acted on change when they were concerned about their reaction of POC, not to prevent further discrimination.

It’s not to say that it isn’t interesting to focus on the common and large scale examples of Fascism. There was on particular book called the Soviet Cinema which was tailored to inform readers outside the USSR how superior Russia was. It was one of the most amusing things I’ve read as their intentions to promote the greatness is so apparent; according to the book, Russian news-reel presented ‘a country which creates new material and human values.’ It also claims Soviet Cinema is able to capture the ideals of the Lenin and Stalin party and was devoted to art rather than commercialism of the Western Cinema. In Russia, film represented the national economy and was a means of reinforcing socialisation. It wasn’t before reading this book that I realised how monitored cinema was in Russia as the text claims a large part of employees in this industry received council from Stalin. This reminded me of a documentary I watched called Icarus, which stated that Putin developed an illegal doping programme for athletes because each time Russia would achieve a medal in the Olympics, his popularity would increase; perhaps the achievement of cinema had the same effect on Stalin’s popularity.

Exploring the archives, I was able to learn quite a bit on Russian Avant-Garde. My first day at Special Collections, I was given MAKE Magazines where I become increasing interested in an artist called Marevna and her unconventional use of cubism. I have no prior art background but that did not restrict me from learning about other RAG artists, such as Natalya Goncharova. From the books in the archive, I learnt that Goncharova held the belief that ‘painting could do everything sculpture could not’ and had a significant role in developing the group ‘Knave of Diamonds’. The group was said to be inspired by the early work on Picasso and curiously, I checked the archives to compare Picasso’s work and what techniques they may have taken from him. It was also enjoyable when I had the opportunity to visit the Natalya Goncharova exhibit at Tate Modern as I had the luxury to see all her art work in real life, as I was used to only seeing it in books. Avant-Garde and art is a new subject for me and it was great to be introduced to in through SCA. There were other forms of AG which caught my interest; suggest as Japanese AG and the way art was influenced by Post-Hiroshima.

-Nazhrat Iqbal

Building a modern law library

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We start teaching LLBs at Goldsmiths in September 2019. We’ve not done so before. How then were we to build a law library from scratch? What could we do without? What were must-haves? Are there advantages to brand new collections? Are there disadvantages?

For a start, our collection, like our LLB itself, is very forward-thinking. It wouldn’t have been right if we tried to duplicate old law libraries with shelf after shelf of collections of law reports, legislation and paper journals, all gathering dust through lack of use. Buying all the physical sets needed for such a collection would have been very difficult to justify, especially in a time when, for environmental reasons amongst others, we don’t want a hugely paper-based collection. In addition, space at Goldsmiths, like in most solicitors’ firms and barristers’ chambers, is at a premium.

Going digital

Law has always been ahead of the game when it comes to digital resources and so for many years libraries in law firms have been getting larger digitally, while getting smaller physically. Our collection very much mirrors that model. As a result, we have a very real-world collection, with a strong emphasis on digital resources.

Like most academic libraries we have subscriptions to Westlaw, Lexis Library, HeinOnline and Nexis. But unlike most academic libraries we have also gone for a subscription to Practical Law – a service which is heavily used in law firms. And now that Practical Law and Westlaw are partner databases, they integrate seamlessly.

We have also gone for large collections of eJournals and eBooks from major law publishers, eg over 1,500 OUP titles, over 3,000 CUP titles and all the newly published Hart eBooks. We are also one of the first universities to buy access to Sweet & Maxwell’s set of student eTextbooks (all of which are fully integrated into Westlaw, with hyperlinks from the text directly into relevant cases and legislation).

Fully available collection

We have made sure that all the modules on the LLB have core student textbooks available digitally, so that there will be no waiting to access these textbooks and you can access them from anywhere in the world. But don’t worry if you do prefer paper copies, we do have them too for these core student textbooks.

We do also have one set of law reports, a very key set – the All England law reports – in paper, so that students can get a feel for a physical set. But, as with most solicitors and barristers, our students will mostly use digital versions of law reports and legislation from our various databases.

Preparation for the workplace

Sometimes digital collections can take a bit of know-how to be able to use them fully. Students will be given as much help and training as they need from Greg Bennett, the law librarian, who has worked at magic circle firm, Slaughter and May and the Institute of Advanced Legal studies, amongst other places. So by the end of their time at Goldsmiths, students will be fully prepared to use the kind of legal libraries that they will have in their careers ahead.

The main advantages of our new collection at Goldsmiths are that it is fully bespoke to the needs of the students; it will teach them how to use the actual resources that they are likely to encounter in their careers; and it is friendly to the environment. You might consider that there is a disadvantage in that it doesn’t “look” like a traditional law library. But then, we at Goldsmiths, like to do things differently 🙂

LGBT History Month and the Library

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lgbt-poster-page-001

LGBTHM is held in February each year. The library is currently highlighting its diverse collections in a display at the front of the library, just inside the main turnstiles. Here, we’re displaying seminal texts, both literary and academic, and films. Examples include ‘The Bell’ by Iris Murdoch and ‘Orlando’ by Virginia Woolf, as well as ‘Mysterious Skin’, directed by Gregg Araki and ‘Happy Together’, directed by Wong Kar-Wai. Each item can be borrowed and we will be frequently updating the selection of resources on display.

The library has an extensive number of academic titles on LGBT themes on the first floor – 306.76 would be a good starting point. Documentary films on similar themes would be held at a similar classmark in the second floor audiovisual area.

We’ve also created an online reading list of important titles, including novels, non-fiction books, children and young adult titles, articles, documentaries and movies. Click on a title you’re interested in and see live availability.

Through our streaming platforms, Film Platform and Kanopy, we also have access to a number of documentary films on LGBT themes.

Film Platform

Films on Film Platform that cover LGBT themes can be accessed here. Documentaries include ‘Before Stonewall’ (1984), which explores the homosexual experience in the US from the 1920s onwards, to the Academy Award-winning documentary ‘The Life and Times of Harvey Milk’ (1984), a portrait of the changing social and political climate in 1970s San Francisco.

Kanopy

There are over 200 documentaries and feature films on Kanopy in its LGBT collection. Feature films include Jean Genet’s ‘Un Chant D’Amour’ (1950) and Cheryl Dunye’s ‘The Watermelon Woman’, originally produced in 1996, but restored in high definition in 2016. Documentaries are listed by sub-theme, such as LGBT History, LGBT Issues and Religion, Transgender Studies, LGBT Media Representation and more.

Films on both streaming platforms can be accessed in full, for free – you just to sign in with your Goldsmiths username and password.

For more information on LGBT History Month, visit their website or their Twitter page, or for more local interest, Spread the Word are celebrating London’s LGBT Writers and Writing.

New Audiovisual Resources: Film Platform and Kanopy

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Following successful trials, the library has now subscribed to two new audiovisual resources; Film Platform and Kanopy. Both provide access to rare documentary films that might otherwise never be seen beyond the festival circuit, whilst Kanopy also provides access to arthouse film as well. Both platforms are well used by US universities but Goldsmiths is one of the very few UK universities using either, let alone both.

Film Platform

film-platform

Film Platform works with leading filmmakers to provide educational access to international documentaries that introduce new concepts, expose students to fresh perspectives and enhance classroom discussions. They work with distributors, such as Cats & Docs, First Hand Films and The National Film Board of Canada. Films are accompanied by study guides, including press kits, articles and interviews with both filmmakers and their subjects.

Film Platform works with academic advisory boards to ensure the films in their collection are suited to universities and their students. Chris Berry, formerly of the Media and Communications department at Goldsmiths, now at King’s College, is a board member.

You can search by film titles or browse by collections, and there are two ways of doing this:

Curated collections (curated by academic staff, researchers, festival directors), including collections on Perfomative Documentaries and Media/Activism
Subject collections, including Human Rights, International, Social and Political Affairs and Gender Studies

Films can be shared via social media/email and clips/playlists can be easily created. Academic notes and information about the film’s festival appearances and awards are also available.

To access Film Platform and start streaming, just visit the E-Resources A-Z list, choose ‘F’ and click on the link to Film Platform. Alternatively, use this link, ensuring you sign-in with the usual username and password.

You can see their latest trailers here. Information on how to stream films is also available here.

Kanopy

kanopy

Kanopy works with over 3,000 universities worldwide, distributing documentaries, indies and foreign films, classics and the odd blockbuster movie too! They work with distributors such as California Newsreel, Criterion, Documentary Educational Resources and Kino Lorber.

There are over 26,000 films in the Kanopy collection. You can search for titles (and Kanopy starts predicting results once you enter words) or browse by a range of subjects, including:

Film and Popular (including documentaries, early film, foreign language film)
Global Studies and Languages (including African studies, Asian studies, Latin American studies and more)
The Arts (including design, literature, music, performance art, photography, visual art)

Much like Netflix, results can be arranged by theme, e.g. race and class studies, gender studies, etc. Or when you search by topic, e.g. Russian film, there are numerous filters you can use to further narrow your search, e.g. suppliers, filmmakers, year of production, etc.

Each film has a transcript and you can click to any point in this transcript to skip the film along to this part. It can be shared via social media/email and also embedded into websites/VLEs. You can also create clips if you only need to stream a certain part of the film, and you can also add to playlists.

To access Kanopy and start streaming, just visit the E-Resources A-Z list, choose ‘K’ and click on the link to Kanopy. Or just follow this link and enter your username and password.

Help on using Kanopy is available here.

Asian Film Online

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Asian Film Online

The library has taken out a subscription to Asian Film Online collections I and II, which provides Goldsmiths students and staff access to a vast collection of feature films, documentaries and short films from across the entire Asian continent.

Many of these films are not available on DVD and will not be in the library already. Most films will not, in fact, have been previously distributed outside of their native country.

Asian Film Online is particularly strong for films from China, India, Iran, South Korea and South East Asia.

Award winning and internationally known directors whose films are in the collection include Darius Mehrjui (Iran), Xie Fei (China) and Adoor Gopalakrishnan (India).

Films can be accessed via the e-resources A-Z list on the library website – this link will take you to the Asian Film Online platform.

Alternatively, each film has been added to the catalogue, with links that will take you directly to the film for streaming.

To see all the films we have access to, search for Asian Film Online on the library catalogue. During other catalogue searches, e.g. Iran film, look for results that show ‘video file – recordings for streaming’ in the location field. These indicate films that can be streamed (many of which will be from Asian Film Online).

You can create playlists of films, make clips within films, share films by URL, access and search within transcripts – Asian Film Online has a very intuitive platform that allows you to use the films however you want.

To access films, you will need to create an account. When you arrive at the Asian Film Online platform, click on Sign In and create an account, which must include your Goldsmiths email address (you cannot register, or access films without this). If you have previously used Alexander Street Press streaming collections, e.g. Ethnographic Video Online, please use the same account.

If you have any issues using Asian Film Online or any streaming collections we have access to, email the Audiovisual Librarian, Kevin Wilson (kevin.wilson@gold.ac.uk).