Welcome to the Widening Participation Subject Guide - giving you information on library resources and services.
The University of Edinburgh has long been passionately committed to and taken a lead in WP, pioneering many different types of access programmes and best practice, including the Lothians Equal Access Programme for Schools (LEAPS) and Pathways to the Professions in the 1990s, which are now embedded across the sector. This page includes links to university resources and policy as well as guides for supporting a diverse student body.
Discover more in the University of Edinburgh's Widening Participation Guide.
The University of Edinburgh has a number of libraries which you have access to as a matriculated student. These include the Main Library at George Square, the Edinburgh College of Art Library, the Royal Infirmary Library and several other sites across our campuses.
We understand that visiting the libraries for the first time might make you feel anxious, which is why we have produced Library Orientation Guides for each of our sites to help you plan your visit and navigate your way around the spaces. The following pages contain more information on how to get the most of your visit:
Students are welcome to bring their children with them when they are borrowing and returning books in the library. Please see our Policy for child access to the Main Library | The University of Edinburgh.
The Main Library Café welcomes all customers, and provides short term use PCs for students. There is a mobile baby changing facility there which can be requested for use in the adjacent conveniences.
The Main Library has a First Aid room on Level 1 that is also an area where mothers may express milk in private.
1. Use EdHelp to get quick advice on library and other questions
2. Book a 1:2:1 appointment for longer library support and help
3. Book a quiet study space in the library
4. Borrow a laptop for free
5. Scan a chapter or article in the library for free
Like this? Read more in our blog post Ten ways students can save money and time by using the library.
The Centre for Open Learning Subject Guide contains information on the library resources and services that are available to you.
The University of Edinburgh's Access Programme is helping those who missed their first opportunity to study for a University degree. Now students of all ages and backgrounds can return to higher education.
You can read about the experiences of former Access Programme students in this interview conducted by Dr Aileen Ballantyne by clicking the link above.
Use DiscoverEd to find books, ebooks, journals, ejournals and more. Sign into your Library account using your University Login to manage your loans and requests.
Resource Lists are online reading lists that can signpost you to key reading materials. Some of your courses may have a Resource List embedded in the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) but you can also access them directly. Full details are available on the Resource Lists: Information for Students webpage.
Subject Guides from other disciplines can be a useful source of ideas and information. Some focus on a topic such as newspapers as well as others that are more subject specific e.g. Business, Medicine economics etc. A full list of subject guides is available on the university website. You can also contact the Academic Support Librarian for different subject areas if you would like more support or to discuss the content of these guides.
We'd love to hear any suggestions you have for this or any of our other EDI focused content. If you know of books, articles, videos or podcasts you think we should add to our guides, let us know! You can contribute to our Padlet here.
If you'd like to speak to us directly about anything mentioned in this toolkit or you'd like to be involved in helping us review or test future resources before they go live, you can find the Academic Support Librarian for your subject area via the links on this page:
Alternatively you can email our team using the following link which will direct your call to our Unidesk mailbox. One of our colleagues from the EDI working group will pick up the call from there and get back to you:
