Abstract:This article outlines and assesses the research into resource management and ordering processes at the University of Northampton and academics' knowledge of these processes.The aim of the research was to identify ways of streamlining the service, to improve communication between academic and library staff, with the objective of an enhanced student experience. The focus groups highlighted concerns around growing spoon-feeding in Higher Education and the ongoing communication barriers between academic and library staff. This article will evaluate the current debates, research and practices within the sector and present and analyse the findings of the research. Article:The nature of the academic library has undergone improvements over the last decade in order to meet the challenges of change that technology has introduced into modern university life. Michalak (2012) asserts there has been a concerted effort to 'develop research libraries from lumbering old-fashioned organizations into agile, change-oriented enterprises pointed directly into the future' (Michalak, 2012, p. 412). She maintains that a transformation has been effected by focusing on areas such as an 'outward facing approach' and how operationally it has become 'technology diffused' (Michalak, 2012, pp. 412-413). In terms of collection development, an outward facing approach means that librarians actively meet academic staff outside of the confines of the library space to assess the latter's teaching and learning needs. The diffusion of technology is realised through moving to immediately accessible e-resources and the digitisation of rare books and articles within the constraints imposed by copyright law. While these are major improvements to the learning experience of students and research needs of staff, print resources are still in demand. The Library and Learning Services (LLS) annual review for The University of Northampton (UN) shows, for example, that in 2015 the total number of unique print loans (excluding renewals), were 117,839, while section requests for electronic books went up to 1,216,549 (Appendix 1). Continued demand for print means that the availability and speed of availability of these Opening lines of communication book ordering and reading lists the academics view final.docx 2 resources remains a concern. Technology diffusion, allied with a concerted collaborative approach, could lead to a distinct improvement in the ordering process of these materials, thus enhancing both access and the learning experience.
In 1796, Matthew G. Lewis capitalised on the turmoil of late eighteenth-century revolutionary violence, and upheaval, to unleash his scandalous novel The Monk. While the supernatural Gothic may appear to characterise his work, there are distinct materialist attributes that permeate his narrative undermining his gothic schema. This essay seeks to explore Lewis' gothic materialism and how he uses it to challenge dominant dualist ontology, whilst also demonstrating that dogmatic philosophical or religious positioning is ill equipped to deal with the realities of human experience. Matthew G Lewis: Materialism and The MonkErupting upon literary sensibilities in the 1790s, the eighteenth-century Gothic was a reaction to enlightened rationalism and the Enlightenment's tendency to present experience as purely explanatory. The Enlightenment's foregrounding of reason over superstition as opposed to the Gothic's focus on the irrational and supernatural, intimates that the Gothic can be viewed as a distinctly anti-Enlightenment mode of critique. Certainly, this inclination is implicit in Matthew Lewis's scandalous novel The Monk [1796]. Critic Andrew Smith (2007) suggests that the Gothic's explicit concentration on evil behaviour and deeds, and the demonising of individuals who perpetuate such acts, was a profound retort against the horror and violence witnessed in the Terror of revolutionary France. 1 He argues that this focus counters the legacy of enthusiasm for social, political, and religious reform championed by Enlightenment thinkers and advocates. 2 Gothic scholar Fred Botting (2001) observes, it is the very rise of enlightenment reason and its associated tenets, empiricism, scientism and objectivity, that necessitated an oppositional reaction. Thus, superstition, the supernatural, sublime natural force, darkness, and violent passions -where human fear and uncertainty materialise through transgressive taboos and prohibited behaviours, became intrinsic to the Gothic genre. 3 Hence, the principal focus of the gothic was to express anxieties about the status quo. By utilising an extreme oppositional stance to the hegemonic currency of Enlightenment ideas, the gothic exposed the inherent difficulties generated by Enlightenment thought. Matthew Lewis in The Monk employs this eighteenth-century gothic schema; the supernatural, unreason, desire and taboo are essential devices in his critique of a so-called Enlightened Europe. However, there are also instances where Lewis deconstructs this schema. At times, during the narrative, he utilises contradictory juxtaposition which draws attention to the logical extremes of Enlightenment materialism. In doing so he emphasises an absolute freedom of human action through which all moral order collapses. Indeed, during the eighteenth century, materialism was beginning to take a disquieting hold in philosophical quarters. Thus paradoxically, gothic horror in The Monk can be seen as a testimonial for an antidualist, monist materialism, but also synonymously as a distinct warning of...
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