When we say we’re back, we were never really away.

As with the whole of campus, and shops and businesses across the country, we closed our Library building on 23 March but throughout the whole of lockdown our extensive digital library, including 228 databases, over 40,000 e-books and over 12,000 online journals, has been available.

More importantly, our amazing staff have been available on live chat, email and for one-to-one teaching and appointments 7 days a week to support your learning, teaching and research.

We will continue to work hard providing the high-quality Library Services you expect remotely, but we also have plans to reintroduce access to our physical stock, study spaces and computers, which we necessarily couldn’t access during lockdown, but we know you have missed.

Planning for reopening

For several months now we have been planning for a phased reopening of our building and reintroduction of physical services.

It has proved to be a complex operation involving many people contributing to preparing the building, assessing risks, configuring new systems and adapting our services and ways of working into a new covid-safe shape.

Working together with Library staff, staff from across the library and HE sectors and our colleagues from Estates, Security, IT&IS, Communications, Student Support, Student Engagement and people across Goldsmiths we are now delighted to be able to gradually reintroduce services and welcome you back to the building.

How the Library will look in the Autumn Term

When you visit us you will notice that there are lots of changes to how the library looks. Some of the things you will notice are spaced out study desks, sneeze screens and lots of signage explaining social distancing and seating arrangements.

The safety of our staff and library users has been central to all of our planning, so when you are visiting us on campus we expect you to follow college guidance including wearing a face covering and practicing social distancing. You can find out more about measures we have put in place to help keep everyone safe on our Library Guide.

How you can access the Library in the Autumn Term

With all our safety and social distancing measures in place using the library to borrow and return items, to study or to use a computer will look a little different in the Autumn Term.

For borrowing books, we have now introduced a Click and Collect service so that you can access collections that aren’t available digitally. You are also able to return books to us in the Library lobby, by post or with our security colleagues.

To use a computer or study at the Library we will be introducing Bookable Study Spaces in the week commencing 21 September and do get in touch if you have questions about accessing our Special Collections and Archives.  We need to ask people to book to use the library in advance rather than just turning up and walking in because of social distancing and also because we are required to comply with NHS Test and Trace.

You can find out more details about how you will be able to access the library on campus and what you can expect from the new services and arrangements by visiting our Library Guide.

Some more changes

Alongside delivering our remote service, planning for reopening and doing lots of other work to support learning, teaching and research activities we have had some changes to our teams over the summer.

We have a new Director, a realigned library management team and we are also delighted to introduce the newly re-configured Library Academic Support Team (AST).

The AST encompasses skilled and experienced librarians, study skills professionals, the Royal Literary Fellows, and our administrator. The team are dedicated to working together to offer an impactful, blended model of academic support and skills provision to enhance the student experience and support you.

The team offer one-to-one tutorials, workshops and lots of specialist knowledge to help you get a head start on your learning. You can book one-to-one

tutorials with our Subject Librarians to help you make the most of library resources or with our Study Skills Tutors  to help you improve your study skills, research skills and academic writing.

You can also meet one of our Royal Literary Fellows who are professional, published authors whose role is to help you strengthen your writing. Bookings can be made by emailing:

Mondays: dyan.sheldon@rlfeducation.org.uk

Tues & Weds: marianne.kavanagh@rlfeducation.org.uk

Thurs & Fri: rachel.seiffert@rlfeducation.org.uk

Keeping up to date and feeding back

As with everything in the ‘new normal’ we will be revising and adapting our access to the library and services as things change and progress. To keep up to date with any changes keep checking our Library Guide and we welcome feedback on our live chat and email.