Let me be clear, I love the British Library. The sunny plaza in summer, great exhibitions, a bookshop, and let’s not forget the cakes in the café. What’s not to like? Free entry too.
But this is all just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath is a PhD student’s heaven, a repository of every book, journal and newspaper published in the UK and Ireland, and a whole host of books, journals and newspapers from around the world, many of which can only be accessed in the famous reading rooms or at the massive storage centre at Boston Spa in Yorkshire. The Library also has digital and broadcast data and knowledge, storing 50 hours a day of TV and radio news broadcast in the UK since 2010, archiving thousands of web pages, and developing digital research tools. If you fancy a bit of light relief, there’s a repository of over 400,000 doctoral theses to browse.
How do I know all this? Every year the British Library runs a series of Doctoral Open Days aimed at first year PhD students. The one I attended in January (for social sciences) not only covered the collections and how to use them but also gave us an insight into digital research, oral history, researching law and government, new media, social welfare, business and intellectual property. We got a chance to talk with other social science PhD students about analytical tools, ethics, openness and collaboration. And we had a talk about the UK’s world-leading longitudinal research.
If you get a chance to go to one of the open days, I’d thoroughly recommend it, but if not, there’s plenty to explore through the website and youtube and it’s very easy for PhD students to get a reader’s pass.
Ruth Read
Ruth is a current ESRC-funded student in the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham. Her working thesis title is 'The Meaning of Employment, Unemployment and Social Justice in the Lives of People with Mild Learning Difficulties'. Visit her profile here.
Posted on Thursday 2nd February 2017