COVID-19 / Activities update by the Natolin Library

April and May 2020 

The Library has temporarily changed its mode of operations, as have other services at the College of Europe in Natolin. While entry to the Library building itself is limited, the Library continued to serve Natolin students until the end of the academic year.

"All principal functions of the Library remain unchanged: printed books are circulating among readers, electronic documents are delivered to remote users, librarians are available for consultation and bibliographic advice. We work as usual; the only change is the dimension: we are purely digital now." – Wiktor POŹNIAK, Natolin Library Director

Library staff provided students with all necessary readings on request. Those who were on campus and wished to borrow a book from the print collection just needed to send a request to Library staff, who delivered materials to student pigeonholes in the Włodkowic Residence. Daily newspapers were available for consultation at the entrance to the Library building.

Students who were off campus were provided with scans of requested chapters and electronic documents. The Library also offered remote access to the EBSCO and ProQuest platforms with over 180,000 books and several hundred thousand full-text articles.

The Library worked closely with the Academic Assistants of the European Interdisciplinary Studies programme in order to provide access to e-books and articles from reading lists and made them all available to Natolin students via the intranet.

"Since 13 March, we have provided Natolin students with more than 40,090 pages of electronic publications and have delivered more than 310 printed books. Thanks to the cloud technology, scanned or digital materials can be accessed and shared by the whole Natolin community. As our students have already started the second semester examination session, we stay in close contact with the Academic Assistants in order to ensure that all required readings for the exams are available remotely."

Before the exams, an additional reading room was arranged in the Skłodowska-Curie Auditorium where twelve comfortable workplaces were available 24/7 for those students who preferred to study outside of their room. Social distancing measures allowed our readers to study and revise for exams in very good and – above all – safe conditions.

"We have received a lot of positive feedback from our readers and we are very proud of it. Taking into account the overall situation, the Natolin Library team will continue to provide all students of the Hannah Arendt Promotion with the current digital services also in July and August without any interruption." – Wiktor POŹNIAK, Natolin Library Director

The Natolin Library is one of the biggest libraries specialized in European studies in the region. It holds a collection of over 45,000 books covering all the subjects taught at the College of Europe in Natolin and many more. It also boasts a large periodicals collection on European Affairs and an extensive collection of electronic and data resources.