Welcome Week and an Introduction to our ENU Libraries

Hello and welcome to all of our new and returning students for the second trimester of the academic year. We have started to see many of you passing through all three of our campus libraries and often looking around with much curiosity and wonder at our library spaces, bookshelves and study areas. We may have even already met a few of you who have come to our campus library helpdesks to ask us about our libraries, services and other general queries about the university facilities and technology.

Don’t forget we are always happy to help and have prepared this blog post to give you a rough outline of what resources and services that ENU libraries have to offer, how to utilise and get the best out of them and how we can support you with your studies. You can of course, email us at library@napier.ac.uk or alternatively phone 0131 455 3500 if you have any specific or further questions you would like to ask us, as well as visit us at our library helpdesk,s should you wish to speak to us in person during our staffed hours. Also, follow our @ENU-Library Instagram page for regular updates and daily posts about the resources and services we have to offer.

 

Opening Hours and Locations…

 

Our general Opening Hours can be found on our My Napier webpages via the library tab.  Staffed hours in all of our campus libraries are 8:45am-16:45pm Monday to Friday. Our libraries are unstaffed at weekends but still free to use from 9am-5pm, albeit Merchiston library zones 1-4, which are free to use 24 hours every day of the week. Opening hours can be subject to change during holiday periods and seasons throughout the year – we will update them and inform you of any temporary changes to them accordingly.

 

Our three campus buildings are the Sighthill campus, the Merchiston campus and the Craiglockhart campus. Each campus library has resources tailored to the specific school hosted within each campus building.

  • Sighthill hosts the School of Health and Social Care (SHSC) and School of Applied Sciences (SAS), so in this campus library you will find a variety of resources and textbooks on nursing, pharmacology, physiology, psychology, chemistry, biology and biomedical sciences to give a few examples.
  • Our Merchiston campus hosts the School of Arts and Creative Industries (SACI) and School of Computing, Engineering and the Built Environment (SCEBE), so in this campus library you will find a variety of resources and textbooks on film, photography, literature, music and composition, surveying, engineering, construction, transportation and computing and computer science to give a few examples.
  • Our Craiglockhart campus hosts The Business School (TBS), so in this campus library you will find a variety of resources and textbooks on topics such as management, finance, accounting, marketing, recruitment, human resources and entrepreneurship, to give a few examples. Craiglockhart campus library also hosts our law hub with a range of up-to-date and varied material regarding current laws and legal matters in various areas.

 

This is not to say that each campus library only has books on these specific topics and subject areas, as you may well find a book on human resource management at our Sighthill campus, for example! We also have our Wellbeing Collection with a variety of resources covering topics such as mental health, wellbeing, neurodiversity and settling into university life. You can find out more about what our Wellbeing Collection has to offer in our LibGuide, which also has useful guidance and information about literature searching, critical thinking and evaluation, utilising reading lists and referencing – all of which will be extremely useful to you when assignments, exams and deadlines start to pop up throughout the year!

So how do I request and borrow a book?…

 

You can search for and request books and resources through our LibrarySearch catalogue, which is also where you have access to all of our physical and online resources, which we have in our library stock or through institutional access. To request a book to be kept on hold for you, you will need to sign into LibrarySearch with your student number and password. Once you have done this, you will need to search for the desired item in the search bar and click on the item record.

If you scroll down the item record, you will then find a link that says ‘Request’ which, once clicked, will prompt you to fill out a request form for the item, including a section where you can choose your preferred campus to collect your request item or resources from as well. We keep all requested items on our hold shelves for a maximum of seven days before we reshelve them – you will receive an email from us once your requests are ready to collect!

 

If there is a book or article you need which you cannot find in our LibrarySearch catalogue, we also have an Inter Library Loans service where you can submit a request form for a chosen title that we do not have in our library stock. Once we receive this form, we will then see if another library institution in the UK can lend us a copy they may have to lend to you through us.

 

Can I borrow a laptop from ENU libraries?…

 

Need to borrow laptop? Well you certainly can! You can borrow one of our Lapsafe laptops from any of our campus libraries, the JKCC or Bainfield student accommodation for a maximum of 14 days from one of our Lapsafe locker self-service machines. Find more information in our Laptops to loan My Napier webpages.

 

We hope this has given a decent overview of what our ENU campus libraries have to offer and how we can support you, although do feel free to contact us or come to one of our library helpdesks if you have any questions or queries!

 

By Rachel Downie

 

Have a look at our campus guides