Page 66 - The Wish Stream Year of 2020 Crest

A Sandhurst Library Revolution! Extending resources, and supporting academe in 2019 and across the
challenges of the 2020 pandemic
John Pearce – Senior Librarian, The Central Library, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst
2020 has been an extraordinary year. The COVID pandemic has shaped how we live our lives, do business, and, from a Sand-
hurst perspective, how we deliver and support the intellectual component of phase one officer training.
One of the interesting outcomes of the COVID pandemic has been to underline how impor- tant libraries are in supporting research and the delivery of higher education across the civil- ian and military sectors. With the onset of the first UK wide lockdown in March, students and researchers suddenly found they had no physi- cal access to libraries and document archives. Indeed, the Bodleian Library in Oxford closed its doors, all university libraries across the country restricted student and public access, and even researchers were denied physical entry to the British Library and the National Archives at Kew.
(1741-1939) and the Royal Military College Sandhurst (1812-1939), the core of its printed collection dates in part to the early 17th century. Books and libraries have always held a special place in the Army for learning and morale, and a certain Gentleman Cadet, Winston S. Church- ill of E Company, would extol the virtues of the library and reading room at Sandhurst as part of his own cadet experience in a letter to his father in September 1894.
Some 126 years after Churchill wrote so enthu- siastically to Lord Randolph, the Library at Sand- hurst underwent a quiet revolution. The Central Library Strategy and Vision 2018-2023 articu- lated its mission to re-profile the library budget, to expand the library’s electronic collections and reach, and to underline its value as a Sandhurst reputational asset. As part of this ambition, the library has been working with the academic
Despite the immense challenges wrought by COVID in this country and around the globe, the Army of course returned to training at Sandhurst in May 2020, and in this review, I am going to focus on the positives. Here we shall see how The Central Library of The Royal Military Academy Sand- hurst moved forward in 2019 to create the conditions for success and meet the unexpected chal- lenges of 2020.
Gentleman
Cadet Winston
S. Churchill of E, would extoll the virtues of the library and reading at Sandhurst as part of his own cadet experience...
faculty to provide a prestige venue for military history (WARDIGS) and leadership (CABSDIGS) seminars that are open to all cadets and staff across the Academy and Defence.
After much planning, The Central Library at Sandhurst led the way across Defence libraries in April 2019. It became the first directly run MoD library to implement a modern library Discovery Service. Through one Discovery portal, the library now provides simultaneous search access to the catalogue,
Valued by home and international academics alike, The Central Library of The Royal Military Academy Sandhurst is one of the great military libraries and collections held within Defence. Bringing together the combined library collec- tions of the Royal Military Academy Woolwich
directly subscribed electronic journals, in excess of 200 specialist E-books, JSTOR Security Studies and four other full text academic elec- tronic databases. All these have been licensed for Sandhurst specific use and with the addition of databases licensed via the centre in Whitehall,
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