Visit to IOE Library

I recently visited the IOE Library   “The Newsam Library and Archives holds extensive collections of current and historical materials on education and related areas of social science. In addition to supporting the work of staff and students at the Institute of Education, the Library and Archives welcomes enquiries from all scholars, researchers and others in the community with an interest in education.”  The Library has a blog. (All the best people have blogs).

I used to work at the IOE Library a while ago and I went to visit Nazlin Bhimani who is Research Support & Special Collections Librarian at the IOE. The role involves providing research support to the students and staff in the Doctoral School and to researchers at the Institute for example on compulsory modules, workshops, 121 support, enquiries and lunchtime talks for staff. The Doctoral School Information and Literature Searching compulsory modules are currently face to face but will be moving online from October 2014.

The IOE also use LibGuides similar to ours for example our Researcher guide and Social media guide.

Some of the IOE Researcher Library guides include: Researching and the Digital Researcher An example of a digital literacy project is Digital Literacies as a Postgraduate Attribute project   There has been a conference held at the IOE called Beyond the REF.

I found that the IOE Library looked physically very similar to when I worked there with the addition of some new IT/ group study rooms but what had changed the most was some of the job roles for example in the area of researcher support. I have found it very useful to visit and speak to colleagues in other Universities and share experiences with them.  My highlight was possibly feeding on home made cake in their staff room where I used to have my breaks.