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Elizabeth Spreadbury Library

19 Mar 2024

Elizabeth Spreadbury Fund & Library

Elizabeth Spreadbury

Elizabeth Spreadbury was killed in 1990, when a car hit her bicycle in Geneva as she rode home from a shift on the CERN OPAL experiment, on which she was doing her Ph.D. Her parents gave her textbook collection, already extensive, to the group and an endowment to the Department which was used to establish the Elizabeth Spreadbury Fund. This Fund has received several generous donations from Elizabeth's parents, John and Jane, who have now both sadly passed away and these have been used to pay a HEP postgraduate student to act as librarian. We will be extending the use of The Fund to establish a HEP PhD studentship and a HEP travel bursary in Elizabeth's name.

In 1995, a beloved senior theory professor - Leonardo Castillejo - also died suddenly and his wife gave some of his books to the library. Since then the group has spent its own, and some Spreadbury Fund, money to improve the usefulness of the collection. We currently have 425 books. We welcome suggestions for future purchases - if you have a suggestion, please contact the Librarian. We also welcome donated books.

In memory of Elizabeth's twin passions for particle physics and astronomy an annual lecture - is held. A full list of the lectures since 1991, including links to some posters and lecture notes, can be found here.

For a short biography of Elizabeth, click here.

Elizabeth Spreadbury Fund

The capital of the Fund is invested in the UCL Unified Fund. The interest from which is used to fund:
  • The annual Spreadbury lecture and reception.
  • The purchase of books for the Spreadbury library and a modest stipend for the librarian.
  • A HEP PhD Spreadbury Studentship through the UCL Impact scheme, whereby UCL matches the donation from the Spreadbury fund.
  • A Spreadbury bursary fund to support HEP/Astro PhD student travel to conferences and to provide support for students with extenuating circumstances in financial difficulty.
The terms of administration of the fund were approved by UCL council in 1990 and the fund is currently administered by: Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont (MSSL), with Professor David Waters (HEP) as treasurer, Dr. Alice Breeveld (MSSL), Emeritus Professor David Miller (HEP), Professor Silvia Zane (MSSL) and Miss Amalia Bountoureli (HEP administrator).

Elizabeth Spreadbury Library

The Library is located at room D17, on the 1st floor of the Physics & Astronomy building, just in front of the staircase.

Librarian

Current librarian: Ricky Nathvani (librarian AT hep.ucl.ac.uk) -- please put "Library" in the subject line.

Some former librarians have been:

1992-1993 Sabah Salih (from Iraq)
1993 Jason Ward and Paul Makkar (both from UK)
1994-1998 Ed McKigney (from USA) and Antonios Papanestis (from Greece)
1999-2000 Ben West and Russell Taylor (both from UK)
2003-2004 Steve Malton
2004-2006 Stathis Stefanidis (from Greece)
2006-2010 Matt Kauer (from USA)
2010-2014 Samer Kilani (from Jordan)
2014-2017 Xin Ran Liu
2017- Ricky Nathvani

How to borrow

To borrow a book, library users must fill in the withdrawal sheet (available in the room, on a clipboard). It is essential to have a record of the borrower's name, date of borrowing and the book title and author.

Returning books

When returning a borrowed book, please DO NOT put it back on the shelf you got it from. You will find a shelf for returned books near the door. If you have taken a book off the shelf just to consult it and do not wish to borrow it, please replace it exactly where you took it from.

PhD Theses

There is a large collection of theses in the library; they are not in the on-line catalogue, but are listed here. Electronic copies of UCL HEP theses are available via the PhD Theses page.

On-line Search

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Other links

  1. UCL Library Catalogue
  2. HEP Literature Database-SPIRES
  3. Los Alamos e-Print archive (UK mirror)
  4. Particle Data Group
  5. The Durham HEP Databases

Group members are invited to give their suggestions for making this web-page better.
Please send any comments or suggestions to librarian@hep.ucl.ac.uk -- please put "Library" in the subject line.