Hi Giuys

I am considering an LLM in International and Maritime Law or Maritime Law.
As an LLB student I am aware that university classification tables do not matter much for an LLM course. My personal opinion is that all that matter for any student is the library resources and how stuffed is the library.
The more books you have and more up to date resource, the better you are.
Saves time with a lot of thinks, research, knowing resources, working with resources etc.
I had the chance to compare few university libraries and as far I can tell City university LLB resources were appalling. Regarding an availability of resources at their shelves, Bristol University law library, by far excels anything else that I have visited so far. UWE (Bristol) provide plentiful sources in some programme areas and is very poor at others.
Sometimes waiting for an interlibrary loan (ILL) takes ages, nearly two months in one case. Even worse, you need to know your questions way before you start your research in order to rely on ILL as your research source.
I am also aware that City University (London) offers full access to other resources during an LLM course.


Of course everything depends on budgets of the individual University and how much the Uni is willing to spend on resources. But you cannot seriously consider studying at university which does not have much of the current literature on any given topic that they teach. At UWE we studied bills of lading, carriage of good by sea by being exposed to only basic text without much access to practitioner books. I have to argue constantly that there are many type of students, and you cannot expect one to be satisfied by simple textbooks. You need the practitioner resources, you need to see how thing and theory mix together, and you need to be able to hold in your hand books which are tools not just guides. So for me library resources at hand are everything.

So when it comes to resources, I guess the best way is to find out myself, and I am considering visiting individual universities, just to find out whether their library is good enough.
Of course I would appreciate any experiences form past LLM students, or current LLM students, and that is why am writing this post.
Would anyone comment on Swansea and Southampton university library resources?
For me the choice between the two would hang depending on library resources and not on overall satisfaction or prospects.

Thank you for the help,
Pete

You should be able to access and search the Soton library catalogue by going to www.soton.ac.uk/law, then go to Law Libeary on the right, then on that page to WebCat on the right at the top.

Thanks, for the answer.

A catalogue is just an electronic index of stored entries. It helps, but does not give you overall idea of how stuffed is a library. unless you want to spend few days on researching materials on specific subject.

Generally I wanted to hear expressions from other students. with past experiences. They know whether they have problems with resources. I am surprised that people put so much emphasis on satisfaction when universities without tools (books) are rated higher than other which are much better managed resource-wise.

Anyway thanks for the answer , my choice have expanded to Plymouth University, LLM in Maritime and Marine Law.
I guess I can even buy resources and practitioners books if I need them, but that is an extra hassle and money.

Anyway, I would post follow up on my research if it would interest anyone. Does anyone know whether SOTO, Swansea or Plymouth offer external access to other research reseources like CITY does for LLM students?

Pete, you won't find many libraries that a 'stuffed' with books these days. Most student rely heavily (if not wholly) on electronic journals and databases, and that's what I'd look at first before the library.

As a postgraduate you'll be able to use Sconul which will allow you access in to most other university law libraries. http://www.access.sconul.ac.uk/members (I'm not sure about borrowing rights though).

If you want to near a hub of excellent law libraries, you cannot beat London: KCL, LSE, IALS, UCL law libraries and the British Library all within a roughly mile or so of each other.

I beg to differ here, with you.
I am a student myself and do not rely heavily on journals.
Quite the opposite, I always start with practitioners books and move to academic books if necessary at all, and journals of course. In most cases journals are specific issue orientated. Journals are good, but there are many types of students and every single one of us have different style of learning. Bristol Uni Law library for example is really well manned, and I can say stuffed.
You can physically pick up 3-4 current books on CIF, FOB, Marine insurance, Bills of lading, etc.
This year for example I am struggling at UWE. We have modules which presume that we use journals a lot, and as far I can say for UWE this is really a just a waste of time.
Inter Library Loans as I mentioned is an option but in some cases takes more than 2 months and are limited to 10 requests. You cannot seriously teach modules without allowing the students to understand the whole regime. To get a broad view and perspective in many cases you need properly structured books, not just piecemeal journal articles. Also there are ways of finding pirated books and probably my electronic library is much larger in say International Investment Law than Bristol University. I am not complaining, just wanted to find personal opinions from students.

And as I said you cannot generalise what is good for one, because in all cases we are all different, and each of us have different preferences. Definitely, I understand why universities prefer electronic journals, unmanned electronic archives, etc. I have printed more than 4000 pages alone this year, and considering that I also use A4 e-ink .pdf reader, that is quite a waste of paper. Also, I would never read on standard LCD/LED screens, although my EiZO is self adjusting to light, I tend to understand and pick up information much more easily when is on paper, and I tend to remember pages numbers and roughly where I can find something. I admit that Acrobats Indexing does wonders for research; still, I prefer paper to on-screen reading.

Sconul programs, and card also have bands,A, B, etc...For my LLB I have tried using Sconul for accessing the library of the institute of legal research in London. I physically went to London showed my card, just to be sent away, because apparently LLBs does not have access to this resource with their B band. I have wasted quite a lot of time on trying to find resources. Fortunately, pirated books through various sources have virtually saved my head this year. I hope the Sconul for LLM students covers resources which can be accessed when you need them.

There is another problem with the Sconul program. Most universities only allow their in-house copiers to be used through their internal systems. If you are form another institution, there are no options to use university copiers, since you have no university account. Thus, in most situations there is no way that someone can copy what is needed form a book, neither he/she can borrow Items as you mentioned. Believe it or not, the people who designed Sconul have to sit down a assess how the system works in practice in all levels. Everything sounds nice, before you experience the reality. This of course is only my personal view based on personal experiences throughout my LLB study.

All I can say for myself that I would like to go to a University in which I can pick different books on a subject, as is possible in some of the Universities. I understand that Libraries and books are expensive, but seriously, modules without current books are just joke. And please do not take my post as offensive, nothing personal just trying to explain my preferences. I understand that you think that journals are the most important part of a library, and I accept your view. For me that is not the case at all, that is why I have asked for personal opinions from students.
Thank you for the replies again.
Pete

Fair enough - it depends on your subject as to what resources you rely on. But I rarely come across anyone who is so interested in physical materials versus electronic sources these days.

Sconul has never covered undergrads - so it's not surprising you got turned away. You will be able to use it for postgrad study though.

Out of the uni's you mention above, Soton should have the broadest library because it's a research-led uni. A good way to compare stock in each library is using Copac.

Out of interest, what A4 e-ink reader do you use?

Irex DR 1000s.
Irex are bankrupted since that light emanating piece of garbage called I-Pad came into existence. So I guess you do not want to buy something this expensive without a warranty. Apple virtually killed about 5-different project with large screen e-ink e-readers. I despise Apple for their ability to kill other much more useful products with their marketing machine and their absolutely useless devices. Try reading few hours on I-Pad that does wanders for the eyes.
http://reviews.cnet.com/2300-3508_7-10002312-6.html?s=0&o=10002312&tag=mncol;page

All projects are dead, including Plasic Logics Que, which was just what everyone needed. I think I am going to by a Pixel Qi screen when they become a bit more popular and bigger.
http://www.pixelqi.com/products
10.1" is just too small, but generally saves your eyes and unfortunately we have only one pair. Also there was a research done on the ability of humans to remember physical objects and associate with something. Generally we tend to remember much better when there is something physical to associate with, I.E that book, that page Sometimes manual searching is way faster than Indexed search within thousands of titles. Informational load is much higher and capacity to go over information is limited. Standard methods of research in some cases are much easier and faster. Do not dispute the awesomeness of Acrobat Indexing though.

Hope this helps.

Cheers. I'm looking for a reader that's big enough for PDFs etc. The only one I'd come across was the Kindle DX.