There will be some significant changes to the Medical Library over the course of 2016 and 2017. 

These are driven by changes to the undergraduate course of the Clinical School. From 2017 there will be an increase in student numbers each year for 3 years. The resulting c260 (instead of c160) students per year require additional teaching space. The Clinical School building is undergoing significant refurbishment to improve the teaching facilities.

This impacts on the Medical Library, and the service we offer to you in three phases:

Phase 1 – Removing paper journal holdings: Jan/Feb 2016

The Medical Library is located over 2 floors of the Clinical School building, the upper floor (level 4) contains back issues of journals and an IT room for clinical students. This will be handed over to the Clinical School for transformation into teaching rooms.

The journals currently housed on this floor are available electronically or rarely used.   This material will therefore be transferred to a “dark” store, i.e. inaccessible for consultation, until a planned new storage facility is built (planned completion date 2019). This removal work will start on January 25^th 2016, and should take 4 weeks. We apologise for the disruption.

LibrarySearch will be updated to indicated if a journal is available electronically, or in paper form that is inaccessible. If any library user requires an article from a journal held in this “dark” store, we will be happy to offer a free service for supplying the article you need. Please speak to library staff.

Phase 2 – Medical Library temporary relocation: July 2016-May 2017

Building work for the refurbishment of the Clinical School will be starting in July 2016, with completion planned for May 2017. The Medical Library will relocate to a temporary space for the duration of the works. We will aim to ensure that as many as possible of our services continue, but there will inevitably be some disruption.

We will keep you informed of progress as the building plans are developed.

Phase 3 – Medical Library refurbishment: July 2016-May 2017

The temporary relocation of the Medical Library for the duration of the Clinical School refurbishment provides a perfect opportunity to reconsider the Medical Library facilities.

We are currently running a series of exercises to get library user input on the design of the new facilities. Look out for opportunities to get involved in design workshops in early 2016.

We will keep you informed of progress – updates will be posted on the ML 16-17 pages,
but if you have particular suggestions to make
we welcome your input
via our comments wall in the library, twitter, or more traditional routes.