National Library of Wales – online registration now available
[The National Library of Wales at night - a photo I took with my first digital camera in 2000]
A new development that may be of interest regarding electronic resources available to FE colleges in Wales.
In the past people wanting to join the National Library of Wales (NLW) had to travel to Aberystwyth. Because I live here I obviously think Aberystwyth is a nice place – but perhaps not very easy for library users in the rest of Wales to get to. However the NLW has now enabled all their readers, academic and non-academic, to register through a new online registration system.
The good bit for Welsh FE is that if you live in Wales, you can also register for an Athens username and password (and thus access to the National Library of Wales’ Athens-authenticated resources). It may be worth promoting to your users, since it is a free resource for you and them, and also benefits the NLW with an increase in their number of users.
The online registration form is available here.
A list of electronic resources subscribed to by the NLW can be seen here.
Of course if people visit the NLW in person, they can still apply for a Reader’s Ticket without going online. They will need to privide 2 forms of ID, one of them showing their current address. The NLW will take photos of them and a card will be produced (linked to the online registration if previously done).
So now the only reason to visit Aberystwyth is for a sun tan (maybe not today though…).
