Library services at the Ealing site

Rooms may be booked up to one week in advance (or longer if booked through Library staff). You will need to provide your UWL email details and confirmation of the booking will be sent to that address. If you no longer require a room, please cancel the booking no later than one hour before the booking is due to start. 

You may place a booking to use our rooms for any time that the library is open but please note that the timetabling system only allows users to book between midday and 11:55pm and between midnight and 11:55am.

Fair use:

• There is a two hour maximum booking by any one group
• No double bookings by group members are permitted

Please note that in order to allow fair use of these facilities, library staff reserve the right to cancel or amend bookings, or to move those using these spaces to alternative locations in the library in order to make the most efficient use of the space.

All rooms unless otherwise indicated can be booked through the My Timetable tile on the Student Portal. You can also check if a room has been booked before you use it by selecting the "Room Use" option from the Administration menu in My Timetable. 

If a room is not otherwise booked, you are free to use it but please be prepared to vacate should someone with a booking need the room. 

All bookings are confirmed to your student email. Please be prepared to show this in the event of a dispute or contact Library staff.

First Floor

Study Room 1 [PE-01-002]. Small bookable room with space for up to four people.

Study Rooms 2 and 3 [PE-01-002b and PE-01-002c]. Two bookable enclosed study booths which can fit up to five people. Both booths have large digital screens that can be used with a laptop. 

Pavilion Study Spaces, Heart side. This area contains a number of small study booths suitable for group work that are available on a first come first served basis. A number have large screens that can be used with a laptop.

Second Floor

Study Room 4 [PE-02-009] and Study Room 5 [PE-02-10]. These are two large bookable conference style rooms that can accommodate around 10 people each. Each room is equipped with an adjustable table and computer for students with disabilities and have large digital screens that can be used with a laptop. 

The three classrooms [PE-02-002, PE-02-003 and PE-02-004] on the Heart side of the Paul Hamlyn Library as you exit to the Warwick Building are not part of the library and are not available for booking by students.

Third Floor

Study Room 6 [PE-03-001A]. Small three to four person room with an adjustable table and computer for students with disabilities. 

The large classroom [PE-03-001] on the Heart Space side of the Paul Hamlyn Library as you exit to the Warwick Building is not part of the library and is not available for booking by students.

Paul Hamlyn Library event space

On the Second Floor Heart side of the Paul Hamlyn Library, adjacent to rooms PE-02-002/PE-02-004 on the Warwick exit side of the library, is our bookable event space.

This area is available for UWL staff and students to hire for specific events. For more information please contact library@uwl.ac.uk or see our dedicated Events Space information below.

Publisher and philanthropist Paul Hamlyn (née Paul Bertrand Wolfgang Hamburger) was born in Berlin, Germany on 12 February 1926. He moved to Britain in 1933 with his parents and three siblings, educated first at Hall School, Belsize Park then at St Christopher’s in Letchworth, Hertfordshire. He left school at the age of fifteen to become an office boy at Country Life magazine in London. During the war he worked variously as a 'Bevin Boy' coal miner and local newspaper reporter in South Wales and then took on various jobs in the book trade (including selling books from a barrow) in which he was to later make his fortune and reputation.

Paul launched his first publishing company, Books for Pleasure in 1949 (to be followed later with a recorded music business Music for Pleasure in 1965) with the then novel concept of selling competitively priced but well produced books from non-bookshop outlets such as department stores and supermarkets. He grew the company further by taking over failing imprints then sold it to International Publishing Corporation (IPC) in 1964 where he took a place on the board and a book division created in his name until he resigned in 1970 after the takeover of IPC by the then paper manufacturer Reed. That same year Paul was appointed joint Managing Director with Rupert Murdoch of Australian newspaper company News International (NI). He formed a new publishing company Octopus whilst at NI which he then bought out in 1972. Octopus initially specialised in  producing 'own-brand' book series for other retailers and reprinting back-lists licensed from other publishers. Based near UWL in Feltham, West London, Octopus Publishing Group was listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1983 and was then able to grow further through strategic acquisitions of distributors and publishers, notably Heinemann in 1985. In a final and prescient piece of deal-making Paul sold his Octopus publishing empire to Reed in 1987 just before the 1987 stock market crash.

Rather than retire he continued to travel the world and enjoy life, as well as making a long-lasting connection with the University of West London (then Thames Valley University) by becoming the University’s first Chancellor in 1993. This role he took on despite being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and cancer.

Paul was awarded the CBE in 1993 and a Royal Society of Arts medal. He was made a life peer (Baron Hamlyn of Edgeworth) by the Labour Party in 1998. He died on 31 August 2001 aged 75. He was survived by his second wife Helen and two children, Michael and Jane. His brother Michael died in 2007.

His legacy lives on in many guises, not least in his charitable foundation, the Hamlyn Foundation (established in 1972), which has generously supported arts, education (including libraries and book preservation) and developing country projects over the years. It is fitting that, in recognition of this generosity and his service to the University, our new library bears his name.¹ 

Bibliography

Norrie, Ian (2006) Mentors & Friends: Short Lives of Prominent Publishers and Booksellers I have Known. Elliot & Thompson, London.

Paul Hamlyn (2016) Wikipedia

Stevenson, Ian (2010) Book Makers: British Publishers in the Twentieth Century. British Library, London.

Notes

1. The former British Museum Reading Room reference library was also named the Paul Hamlyn Library until its closure in 2011, but there is no connection with our library.