I was recently contacted by our Engineering & Design Faculty’s Web Content Editor, Beth Jones, to assist on a fun project. This was to put together a list of inspiring books for aspiring engineers and architects. The list will be shared with 15-17 year olds contacted through the Faculty in its outreach activities. I worked on an initial list with my team – Subject Librarian Thomas Rogers and Information Librarian Clare Bannister – to scour our readings lists and past popular fiction lists to short list some possible titles, accessible textbooks, biographies, fiction etc, that could match against the areas taught at our institution. We then talked to a few staff in the departments we liaise with, those who had time to engage with us, as well as several research postgraduates – the latter were particularly enthused by the idea. This helped us to streamline and improve our list, get some quotes to intersperse it and also fill in some of the gaps for material types per discipline:
We wanted to subdivide the list by discipline…
- Architecture
- Civil Engineering
- General engineering
- Chemical Engineering
- Electronic and Electrical Engineering
- Mechanical Engineering
Within each area e then subdivided by material type. The biggest challenge was finding particularly relevant examples of fiction for certain subject areas! If you’ve any thoughts for the areas we’re lacking in, do let me know.
- Access the list online: Suggested reads for aspiring students of architecture and engineering
We aimed for a short number of items to keep it from being intimidating. It was also important to ensure the list was welcoming to a diverse range of aspiring engineers in terms of gender and ethnicity, so we aimed to include both authors and topics that were inclusive and not just readings/topics that could be deemed classic/canonical, although those are certainly part of each list too. How successful do you think the list is in this regard?
The list is displayed in a web page rather than our reading list system (Leganto), as for the time being we are not able to provide print/online access beyond our current staff and students. As such, we aimed for titles that are still available and not too expensive to acquire if not available via school or public libraries.
I wonder if any of our ARCLIB colleagues have created similar lists? Whether you would be happy to share them and talk about the process. I would also be interested in any feedback on this list? Have we missed anything particularly readable and engaging for our audience? Please do add comments to this post.
Finally, for a bit of flavour and a bit of fun, here is a photo of some of the art/architecture related titles I’ve got on my shelves at home at the moment! Something fun to do whilst I stretched my legs after several Teams meetings online this morning. Feel free to share any of your own collections or ‘shelfies’ on our ARCLIB Instagram!
By David Stacey, Faculty Librarian for Engineering & Design | University of Bath
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