Our discovery tool will look for books, journal articles and more in one quick easy search - a great place to start your research. For a more comprehensive search, individual databases offer greater functionality and give full access to a tailored suite of resources for your subject.
Search for books, articles, and electronic resources:
Search for books only (does not include all electronic books):
Search for full-text articles:
Books in the Library are arranged by shelfmark (the unique code on the spine of each book). The shelfmark ranges for each floor are detailed below and further information is available in our finding books by shelfmark guide.
Which shelfmarks are on which floor?
Floor 3: The Law Library (includes books and journals of shelfmark K); journals with shelfmarks A-Z.
Floor 2: Books with shelfmarks J-Z.
Floor 1: Books with shelfmarks A-H.
Ground floor: Help desks: Library Welcome Desk, Library Help Desk, Computer Centre Service Desk.
If all copies of the book you want are out on loan, you can reserve a copy.
As soon as a copy becomes available we will email you to let you know that it is available for collection. Titles will be kept for seven days and are availabe for collection from the shelves opposite the Help Desk.
Alternatively, let us know your mobile number and we can text when your reservation is available. For more information on borrowing books, see our borrowing webpage.
Here are some search tips to get you started:
Tip 1: Narrow your search
Your initial search will look for books, journal articles, newspapers etc, so you might get lots of results. To narrow your search, check the options down the left hand side, for example:
Tip 2: Add more keywords
Depending on what you're looking for, you may have to add more keywords or add the author's surname eg 'sociology fulcher'. This is a more detailed search rather than just searching for 'sociology'
Tip 3: "Quotation marks"
When searching for phrases, it can be useful to enclose them in quotation marks eg "higher education". This will look for the phrase 'higher education' rather than the individual words, 'higher' and 'education'.
And last, but certainly not least:
Tip 4: Review your keywords!
The Library Search will only find what you tell it to search for. If it doesn’t find what you need, review your keywords. Remember, when searching for books, make your keywords quite general; you can be more detailed when searching for journal articles.