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Academic Staff

Library staff seek to work closely with academic colleagues to support their teaching, research and continuing professional development. Use this page to discover the ways in which we can support your teaching and research.

Book Searching and Ordering

Members of academic staff have access to Book Search, which provides information from Dawson's extensive title database of both in-print and out-of-print titles from the UK and around the world. Records can contain bibliographic information, tables of contents, sample pages, and links to new and alternative editions. The database is an extremely useful tool in identifying new texts in your subject area.

If you would like to use this service, contact your Academic Liaison Librarian.

We welcome purchase suggestions for books and other materials. Your suggestions enable us to support teaching effectively and to ensure that students have access to relevant resources. We also encourage feedback on whether to purchase multiple copies of particularly useful items.

New Books Alert Service

You can keep track of the new books we add to Library stock by subscribing to our New Books Alert Service for Architecture and Art and Design. You will receive an email as soon as new titles are added to stock.

New Art and Design Books in GSA Library


arrow icon New Architecture Books in the Library

New Architecture Books in GSA Library 

Reading Lists

The Library maintains a short loan collection of books that have been recommended on tutors’ reading lists. These items can be used to support particular projects or essays, and are available to students on a reference only basis to ensure equality of access to the material. Please contact your Subject Librarian well in advance with the details of any such items and the length of time that you wish the material to be held in this collection.

Current Awareness Services

Our subject blogs provide a one-stop shop for information on high-quality resources available in your subject through the Library or Web. Maintained by your Subject Librarian, these blogs bring information from all kinds of resources together in a single place.

arrow icon Art and Design News Blog

GSA Library Art and Design News 

arrow icon Architecture News Blog

GSA Library Architecture News 

In addition, many of the journals to which we subscribe have RSS feeds, which allow you to know about new issues and articles in your subject area as soon as they are published. See our journals listing by subject to subscribe to these feeds. If you haven't used RSS for current awareness before, watch our quick movie to find out how.

Inductions and Workshops

In addition to giving your students a general induction to Library facilities and services at the start of their studies at GSA, we are able to provide refresher sessions and workshops, for example to support particular projects, or to help them prepare for dissertation research. Have a look at our Workshop Prospectus. and contact the relevant person to arrange a workshop

Online Resources

The Library subscribes to a wide range of online resources which can be used to support both core and related areas of study and research at GSA. These include bibliographic databases, high quality image banks, digital sound and video, and maps.

Online Resources at Glasgow University

GSA staff can now access a huge range of resources at Glasgow University Library through our reciprocal membership scheme. See our Other Libraries section for full details.

Other Libraries

Academic staff on open or fixed term contracts can join SCONUL Access. This scheme, which is free, allows you to borrow from most of the UK’s Higher Education libraries. Please note that the scheme does not provide access to ICT facilities or library online resources.

See our Other Libraries section for full details on SCONUL Access and other libraries to which you can gain access.

Academic Liaison Librarians

Our Academic Liaison Librarians can provide expert advice on our collections and on print and electronic resources in your area of interest, and are available if you have information needs relating to your teaching or research. You can also contact our Subject Librarians about accessing resources elsewhere, both virtually or in other libraries, and request book purchases if we do not have what you are looking for.

The Academic Liaison Librarians' office is located on the upper level of the Main Library. You can usually pop in to see them during normal working hours. Alternatively, use the contact details below.

Education Journals

The Library subscribes to over 300 journals in all aspects of art, architecture and design. In addition, we subscribe to a number of journals covering aspects of education, learning and teaching.

Education Books

The Library stocks a number of books in all areas of learning, teaching and research, from special needs education, to curriculum development, and from e-learning to course design. Full details are available in the Library Catalogue, whilst the following shelfmarks will help you when browsing the collection.

Inter-Library Loans

We offer an inter-library loan service for GSA students and staff which can be used if you cannot source what you are looking for in the GSA Library. We can normally borrow material that we do not stock ourselves from other libraries, including books, conference proceedings, and journal articles.

Virtual Learning Environment

The GSA Virtual Learning Environment enables you to create online courses and materials to support your teaching and studio practice. Your students can be enrolled on these courses, and will then be able to access your materials and announcements from anywhere over the Internet.

For easy to understand information, training and advice on setting up and managing a course on the VLE, contact Arthur Loughran, Learning Technologist.

If you are setting up a VLE site, or already have an active site, our Academic Liaison Librarians can go through it for you and suggest links to information resources that your students have access to via the Library. For instance, you might have designed a module that explores the use of colour in design. Our Academic Liaison Librarians can point out links to relevant supplementary materials in our online image databases - creating further avenues of exploration for your students. Simply contact your Subject Librarian.

Information and Research Skills

Our information and research skills section provides authoritative guidance on searching for, evaluating and using information, written in simple and easy-to-understand English. Subjects covered include referencing and citation, bibliographies, and copyright.

If you need to provide guidance and information to your students on these issues, simply point them to our information and research skills webpages. What could be simpler?!

Research Support Collection

Our Research Support Collection has been designed to help our students and staff with their research activities at all levels - from undergraduate to PhD.

It includes all the standard reference works you may need in the course of your work, such as dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopaedias, along with texts on bibliographies, referencing, copyright, style guides, English use and grammar, and much more.

Peer-Reviewed Journals

To support the School's growing research culture, the Library maintains lists of peer-reviewed journals in its subject disciplines. Articles in these journals all undergo peer review as part of the editorial process, and publication of research findings within these journals is therefore well-respected.

ISBNs, ISSNs and Legal Deposit

Guidelines for Academic Staff – How to obtain ISBNs or ISSNs for your publications
pdf icon How to obtain ISBNs and ISSNs