School of Geography

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Nature of the series

The School of Geography has hosted a Working Paper series since 1971. This was designed as an outlet for research ideas and results that authors could disseminate quickly, often to obtain feedback before journal submission. Other papers were used to hold material that journals did not have space for. The papers were not peer reviewed, though a series editor cast a brief eye over them before issue. Until the mid-1990s they were produced on paper in various formats (A4, A5; single-sided, double sided). From the mid-1990s they have been published online, though their location within the School of Geography web site has changed from time to time.

Why and how the digitising was done

Because of the move to new premises in 2015, there was the danger that this corpus of knowledge would be lost, as filing cabinets full of Working Papers had to be sent for recycling. Fortunately, modern technology came to the rescue in the form of multi-function devices (MFDs) with quick scanning capability. Most of the collection back to 1979 has been digitised by Philip Rees, Professor Emeritus, with help from administrative staff Jan Wakefield, Calum Carson, Fikir Assefa and visiting fellow Pia Wohland. Papers between 1978 and 1971 remain to be digitised from copies held in the University of Leeds Library and the British Library over the next year. The quality of the digital capture is a little variable, depending on the quality of the paper original and the performance of the MFDs.

Message to authors

We hope you will find this digital repository of your research a useful resource. If you hold a better paper copy than the one digitised, please get in touch with Phil Rees (p.h.rees(at)leeds.ac.uk) to arrange upgrade to the digital copy. Similarly, if you have paper or digital versions of papers between 1979 and the present that are missing from the collection, please get in touch.

Message to readers

Please be aware that there may be missing working papers anywhere in the series, but particularly in the years 1971-1979. You will get a message saying that a link cannot be made. Over the next year these missing links should diminish steadily.