Just started working on your PhD? Is it in the field of media, cultural studies or journalism? Well then, the British Library's Media, Cultural Studies & Journalism Doctoral Open Day on 24 February 2014 should be for you. We organise these postgraduate open days each year on a variety of subjects, giving new PhD students the chance to discover the British Library’s unique research materials, find out how to access them, and meet  the curators and other researchers in your field. 

The Media, Cultural Studies and Journalism open day will introduce you our extensive news and media collections. These include our vast newspaper collections, the UK national and regional titles going back centuries and access to many international titles too; our UK web archive, with its special focus on news-based websites; our extensive radio holdings; our television news service; our BBC access service, and much more. Much of our news content can only be accessed onsite, so this is a great chance to get a sense of what we have and to plan future research trips.

The day will feature an introduction to British Library services overall, then session on our news holdgings, on using the newspaper collection in particular (with up-to-the-minute information on our new news reading room, opening in March), on web archives, media studies collections and how we are opening up our collections for digital scholarship. You'll get to meet expert staff, and we'd be delighted to hear more about your research and to advise or to suggest sources. It's also a great chance to meet with other researchers in your field.

It's free, and lunch and refreshments are provided, though do note the event is for first year PhD students only, who are new to the Library. Finally, a small number of £20 travel bursaries are available for students coming from outside Greater London.

Booking details are here.