Learning Support: Library Support

If you register with the Library you can borrow most items for 3 weeks and the Library will automatically renew these for you up to 25 times.  

Items can be reserved by other users which will stop your loans renewing.  Make sure you check your Library Account or college email to make sure the items are not due back. 

If your books are overdue and you have any problems returning them, please ask your Learning Support Tutor/Assistant to contact the Library on your behalf. 

Students registered as Learning Support can also reserve items on the shelf.  If you find the library confusing, or find it hard to look for books on the shelf, we can find the book for you and have it waiting at the Library Information Desk for collection.  Alternatively, you can just come into the library and ask for help finding items. 

We have a small selection of Large Print books in the Reading Collection.  Large print books can usually be spotted by the Large Print icon at the bottom of the spine.  A list of our large print books is available here or you can ask at the counter.

Most of the Young Adult Fiction is published in dyslexia friendly font with cream coloured paper. A full list of dyslexia-friendly books is available here. 

There are also a small but growing collection of books using the Dyslexie font, which you can find here.

You can make an appointment with a Librarian.  Librarians are available from 8:30 am to 8 pm Tuesday and Thursday, and 8:30 - 6 on Monday and Wednesday.  We close at 4:30 on Fridays. 

If your book isn't available as an e-book or through the RNIB, we may be able to order an e-book version or ask the publisher to supply an electronic file.  Under copyright, you are also able to scan the whole of one of our print books.  This will mean that the book is readable through other software.  

If you do not need read aloud software, but would like to have the pages enlarged, you can ask at the Learning Support helpdesk on the third floor. 

Many of our books are available online as e-Books.

To find e-Books, go to the Library Catalogue. Type in your keywords or the book title and click on search.  From the results screeh, click on Item Types in the Refine Your Search bar, and select on E-Books.  This will narrow down your results to the online books which can be accessed from any computer or device with Internet access. 

If your e-book is provided through Ebook Central, this includes an accessibility mode for use with screen readers which will enable the use of keyboard shortcuts and the provision of PDFs in a screen reader friendly format. More information is available from the Help button on the Ebook Central website. Additionally the e-books can be downloaded and read using Adobe Digital Editions on any compatible device.

If your book is provided through VLE books, you can download the book to eReader software such as Adobe Digital Editions. However, there are lots more accessibility options you can use within the VLeBooks site.

• The VLeBooks reader has inbuilt text-to-speech, available through ‘Read Online’ which can be used from both desktop and mobile views. Read aloud is a core feature built into the VLeBooks platform allowing all users access to audible facilities where assistive software may not be possible or practical.
• VLeBooks have over 20 levels of magnification using the built-in zoom function, available when reading via the platform, which is operated through universally recognised zoom icons. Windows & iOS magnifier can also be used. The zoom function is designed to work as both a reduction and a magnification tool. The actual font size is dependent on device but typically a reading font size of between 4 to 36 is achievable.  
• VLeBooks has options to change the page background colour, and some books have additional options such as High Contrast mode, dyslexia font, adjusting line, character and word spacing, and adding a reading ruler. 

If your book is through Bloomsbury Social Work books, there are a number of accessibility options, though it can depend on which book you are reading.

• In the Reader Preference setting (the Aa button), you can easily resize the text, change the height and width of the document.  For some books, you can also change the font for one that you find more readable, for example OpenDyslexic.  You can change the 'mode' to Day (black text on white), Night (white and blue text on black), Sepia, or Cyan. You can also adjust the margins and the line height to create more space between lines.
• A Read Aloud function can be found in the More Options (3 dots in the right hand corner).

If you have a visual disability you can join the RNIB Book Share scheme which provides some titles in more accessible formats.  Visual disability can also include dyslexia. 

You can register yourself with the scheme and request a book; or if you prefer, ask the Library or the Learner Support team to try and get hold of particular title for you. The Library is on the ground floor of Hockney or at Trinity Green, while the Learning Support desk is on the third floor of David Hockney Building.

Go to https://www.rnibbookshare.org   for more information.

EBSCO Discover doesn't have many inbuilt accessibility options.

To change the font size - use the browser's own controls. For a list of these, click here.  You can also change the background colour within many browsers now - for example click on the three lines in Firefox and go to Settings.

Text-to-Speech feature for Online full text and PDF full text. 

1. Locate a full-text article that you would like read to you and click the Access now button to select either Online full text or PDF format .

2. In the Online full text or PDF viewer, click the Headphone icon in the tools menu to open the Listen panel on the right and click the Play button to listen.  More information here.