After a short pause the clock is ticking again and One Pool Street will be open and operational from Monday 14 November.

This includes the library space and services managed by Igho Wekpe. At the point of opening we will launch UCL East as a Click & Collect pick-up and return location to support our students living and studying at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. The Library’s LibAnswers queue is already live and active, and the site web page has been updated with opening hours information now visible.

Next week, 7-11 November, will see lots of activity behind the scenes as LCCOS colleagues set up the library, participate in essential H&S inductions and familiarise themselves with their new work and teaching spaces, while students will be moving into the accommodation towers.

Until the Marshgate building opens in 2023, facilities at the new campus will be based at One Pool Street, the location marked with a dot nearest to the London Aquatics Centre on the map showing the UCL East campus and UCL at Here East nearby.

Accommodation for staff includes an 18-desk agile space available on a first-come first-served basis, equipped with 34” screens, docking ports for laptops, keyboards and mice. There is also a café on site and additional support provided at the campus includes a dedicated wellbeing lead. Staff visiting the campus for work purposes can make a claim for expenses incurred on top of their normal costs of travel to work by following the UCL expenses policy.

As we are approaching the final couple of weeks before we open the doors and meet new students, this is my opportunity to explain a little about the work which has been done in preparation relating to library support and induction at UCL East.

Over the past few months, we have been busy preparing resources to support students, with the exciting new postgraduate programmes that will be launching.  UCL East will initially have a ‘Click and Collect’ Service, for the first year with no physical library until 2023, when the Marshgate building opens, which Igho discussed in his blog post a few weeks ago.  This has led us to think creativity about resource provision for students.

I have been working closely with Course Programme Leads, Acquisitions, e-Resources and TLS to ensure we have as many online materials as possible to support items on reading lists – if these are eBooks, journals, databases, or digitised resources, as well as establishing links with Special Collections about the support they can provide.  Working with TLS, we have run information sessions to support new colleagues at UCL East to curate their reading lists, and to understand some of the features of Reading Lists@UCL.

The Library will be having a presence at the induction fair at UCL East on 30th September to meet and greet new students and advise them about the services available to them, so please do come along and say hello if you’re on campus.  Induction sessions have been planned for the first few weeks as well as the start of integrated library skills support, woven into programmes to support students throughout their studies.  We have spent time, as part of the Induction Working Group to ensure webpages have been updated, to incorporate UCL East to help students feel they are fully part of the UCL community.  With so many of the programmes being uniquely multi-disciplinary, this has involved collaboration with other Subject Liaison Librarians and Site Librarians to draw upon their expertise and specialist knowledge.

Craig Martin
Subject Liaison Librarian, UCL East

A post with many pictures this week. Work to finish One Pool Street is frantically underway and we currently have most things crossed that our Library space will be open on time.

One Pool Street will be mainly student accommodation providing a home for 500+ students, but it will also include research labs and studios, a lecture theatre that doubles as a cinema and bike parking for 300+ bikes! Our main focus, though, is the Library space on the first floor of the building. For the first year (2022/23), this will form the hub of our services to staff and students based at UCL East. We’ve already had an update on what services will be available in the UCL East Library space. Last week we also got some new photos of the site: it looks like there is still a lot to do, but the level 1 lecture theatre/cinema is certainly taking shape.

Once we have access to One Pool Street we will be able to start work making sure that the space, which will include 35 study spaces. A further 42 study spaces will be available in the Social Commons on Levels 1 & 2. In addition there will be space for the 3 library staff that will be running the site. Staff working space within One Pool Street will be limited in the first year.