As a PhD student, the LSE Library can easily be one of the most important resources to help you with your research. Housed in the Lionel Robbins Building at LSE, the Library provides not only a study space and access to books, but also offers a menu of services that can prove to be highly valuable for your research.

Data collections and access

The LSE Library provides access to a range of data collections for use in your research – spanning financial and market data to country specific data and even geographic information systems data. Apart from these, you can also access secure data such as NHS data, immigration data and taxation data. The Library has the infrastructures required to facilitate access to secure data. The Data Library team can offer more guidance and advice on finding and using the various data resources available.

Open access publishing and copyright advice

The Library offers open access publishing services to help you share your research with a wider audience. The support offered ranges from picking the right journals to publish your research, advice on author rights and signing publishing agreements, as well as open access book publishing. There are specialist Library contacts that can provide guidance on copyright queries that relate to managing your own copyright, or even the use of copyright in your research.

Training and Workshops

The Library runs several training sessions, courses, and workshops throughout the academic term to help researchers across a number of areas including open access publishing, data management, and using software for reference management. Additionally, since LSE is part of the CIVICA alliance, the Library allows access to training run by other CIVICA institutions. They also run courses on Moodle like introduction to using data resources and managing a systematic search of literature. Over the last academic term, I enrolled in the latter and found it to be very handy when I was reviewing a lot of literature for my research.

Books/journal articles/news resources

LSE’s Library has an extensive collection of resources that you can access online. These include several eBooks, journal articles across a range of databases, and online news collections. Apart from this, you can borrow books as needed. The Library also offers a “Get it for me” service for access to materials that may not be currently available. So, if you ever need an article that is not already available, you can fill out a form and the Library will help you find the material. I have used this service a few times and the Library has always helped me with access to the material I was looking for. Sometimes, in a matter of just one hour!

The Library team

Each department has a dedicated librarian to help you with any questions related to services offered by the Library. There is also a research support team that can provide guidance on research data, research impact, and publishing as well as a team of curators who can help with access to archives and other primary sources for your research. I contacted my librarian multiple times over the academic term for assistance with finding resources, data, access to materials and each time they helped me with whatever I needed. It frankly made reviewing literature less stressful for me.

Apart from these, the Library also has facilities for printing and copying as well as study or meeting spaces that can be booked when required.

I highly recommend familiarising yourself with the range of services provided by the Library, especially its research support division. If there’s ever a problem you run into with access to materials, publishing or data management, there’s a good chance that the Library will be your best bet in helping you troubleshoot it.