Library Facility | Birmingham College

A wide range of resources and services including texts, periodicals, journals are available. All core books in minimum 5 to 10 copies are available. Additional to the core books, books recommended by lecturers are also available for extra reading. A request from students for a new book related to the course can be fulfilled within 7 days.
The Library is a useful starting point for your study and research needs. It stocks books and other materials relevant to your courses. It also has a good selection of reference materials including books, periodicals (some with online accessibility), and reserve articles. There are also novels and DVDs (region 2) available for loan.

Books may be borrowed for three weeks with the exception of Reference books (indicated by a label) which may not leave the library. Fines are charged at 20p per day per book. You can renew books at any time, including outside of library hours, by sending an email. A photocopier and printers are available in the library for student use.

The BMI also includes The Birmingham Library, founded in 1779 and contains 100,000 volumes. The library located at the first floor.

The Birmingham City’s Central Library is less then a minute walking distance from the College. The Library is full of resources, equipped with modern IT facilities. We make our students member of the Library and Students could borrow up to 10 books at a time if required.

In the UK, students are expected to be proactive when choosing what to read from their reading lists. Librarians do not provide lists of suggested books and they do not select books for you. The College library may not stock all of the books on your reading list and it might be necessary to visit one of the many excellent libraries to be found in Birmingham.

Students studying at the College have access the combination of databases, full text, and OCLC FirstSearch Electronic Collections Online service journals that help their study and research works. Please contact the college for access and usage information.

The following databases are available in the ‘Per Search’ option:

Business & Industry	A multi-industry, international database that provides access to company, industry, market, and product information.
Business & Management Practices	Provides information on business and management issues such as decision making; implementing new technology; planning for the future; dealing with internal and external issues; and expanding businesses. Covers business methodology with emphasis on case studies and practical applications. Approximately 60% of records include full text.
Disclosure Corporate Snapshots (Brief entries)	Contains directory information on U.S. companies filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
EconLit	Contains citations, with abstracts, to books, working papers and articles in economics journals.
ERIC--includes thesaurus	A guide to published and unpublished sources on thousands of educational topics. ERIC records include over 115,000 full-text documents.
MEDLINE--includes thesaurus	Covers all areas of medicine, including clinical medicine, experimental medicine, dentistry, nursing, health services administration, nutrition, and much more. Includes the MeSH thesaurus.
OCLC ArticleFirst®	Offers searching and browsing. Contains bibliographic citations of articles and tables of contents from thousands of journals in science, technology, medicine, social science, business, the humanities, and popular culture.
OCLC PapersFirst®	Covers every congress, symposium, exposition, workshop, and meeting added to The British Library Document Supply Centre's (BLDSC) proceedings collection since October 1993.
OCLC ProceedingsFirst®	Provides tables of contents of papers presented at conferences worldwide.
WorldCat® (the OCLC Online Union Catalogue)--includes thesaurus	The world's most comprehensive bibliography, representing over 400 languages on materials ranging from stone tables to electronic books.
Worldscope GLOBAL (Brief entries)	Comprises basic financial information on public companies worldwide.

Founded in 1967, OCLC Online Computer Library Center is a nonprofit, membership, computer library service and research organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the world's information and reducing the rate of rise of library costs. More than 60,000 libraries in 112 countries and territories around the world use OCLC services to locate, acquire, catalog, lend and preserve library materials