- The Library

School and college visits to the University Library

This page provides information for school teachers and librarians interested in arranging a visit to the Library for their students. It also provides preparatory resources to help with planning your visit, for both school staff and students.educatation_definition

Why arrange a visit?
When should you arrange to visit?
Who should you contact to arrange a visit?
What resources are available & what should you expect from your visit?
How to get here & parking
Preparing for your visit

Why arrange a visit?

School visits to the University of Bath Library typically take place for the following reasons:

  1. To allow students thinking of entering Higher Education to gain experience of using an academic library and develop as autonomous learners through exploration
     
  2. To enable students to supplement their research through access to our printed resources, particularly for A-level Extended Projects and International Baccalaureate coursework
     
  3. To foster relations between the University, local schools and colleges, helping each to work toward bridging the gap between secondary and tertiary education, enabling ease of transition for prospective students


When should you arrange to visit?

Schools and colleges can contact the Library directly to arrange a visit. Before you do so, we ask you to do the following:

  1. Make sure you give us a minimum of one month's notice before the date(s) you are proposing for a visit. It is useful to have a few different dates in mind in case some are not possible
     
  2. That you plan your visit to avoid the busiest parts of term, i.e. avoiding October as well as exam and revision times. From the Library’s point of view the University’s vacation period i.e. outside of our term time is most convenient. Check the University’s Academic Year Chart – R and UA are Revision and Unit Assessment days respectively. V is for Vacation and T is for normal term time Teaching days 
     
  3. That you check our subject pages for an overview of the strengths of our collection to ensure they are appropriate to your needs. For example, if your students are primarily interested in the arts, it may be better to arrange a visit to another institution which has more emphasis on these. Our particular strengths are engineering and design, sciences, humanities and social sciences – though we do not have a law department. 
     

Who should you contact to arrange a visit?

Please complete our Ask a Librarian form, detailing your proposed visit and it will be forwarded to the relevant Information and Subject Librarians.
 

What resources are available & what can you expect from your visit?

A typical visit would include a tour of the building, focusing on relevant subject floors. You can also arrange for staff to give a talk explaining the collections and how to search for and locate materials using the library catalogue. Alternatively, we can provide guidance on this in advance and materials you can deliver to students prior to visiting. You can search our OPAC (Online Public Access Catalogue) before visiting.

You may wish to make use of photocopying services for visitors. Visiting school staff or students can purchase a photocopy card and top-up credit using self-service kiosks. Please refer to our tariff here.

As visitors to the Library, you will have reference-only access to all the materials on our open shelves i.e. books, journals, dictionaries, encyclopedias, etc. However you will not be able to log in to our computers, or access our e-resources (databases, e-books and e-journals). However we do have limited walk-in access to select e-resources through 20 dedicated catalogue workstations.
 

How to get here & parking

See our guidance on travelling to the University which includes directions and a campus map.  

You can Pay and display (charge per hour) in A and G Car Parks, as well as part of East Car Park. There are spaces for minibuses. The Library can provide you with a visitor parking permit to be sent to you in advance. This allows visitors to pay and display for the full day for just £1.

For more information see the Visitor Parking webpages.


Preparing for your visit

  1. Have you checked the Library catalogue to see if we have books and journals on your topic of interest?
  1. Make sure you know how to cite and reference materials you will find and use during your visit
     
  2. Check out our floor plans to familiarise yourself with the layout of our collections and resources
     
  3. Have you investigated other sources of information?
  1. Have you identified relevant and reliable web resources?

 

For more information see our general visitors guidance