Library catalogue

Some people prefer to use our catalogue when searching for books, ebooks, dissertations and DVDs. Although everything on the catalogue should also appear when you search Discovery, you can also get lots of other items mixed in Discovery results, which can be overwhelming. The catalogue site is also where you can log in to your borrowing account to place holds and check when your borrowed items are due.

Searching the online catalogue

Quick search

You can search the catalogue directly from the library home page on this site. Or you can go to the catalogue website using the button above. For a quick search, you can just type your search terms into the search bar at the top of the catalogue screen. You can select specific terms to search such as title or author.

Advanced search

There’s also an advanced search option on the catalogue site where you use Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT) and specify search fields and items types. You can add more search fields by clicking on the plus symbol to the right of the search boxes.

Find books on-site

We use the Bliss classification system for our shelfmarks (sometimes referred to as ‘call numbers’). You can use them to locate items in the library: there’ll be a shelfmark code for an item on our catalogue and a matching label on the item. The system works by themes, which means books on a main topic will be found together, so it might be worth browsing while you’re there.

Shelfmarks are alphabetical but can also use numbers, with numbers coming before letters in positioning a book. You read the shelfmark from left to right. Shorter shelfmarks will come before longer shelfmarks. Books with the same shelfmark are arranged alphabetically by the surname of the (first) author.

For example, IAL comes before IAL X (shorter shelfmark comes first). I95 FR comes before IAL (both start with an I but second character of the shelfmark is a number for the first book versus a letter for the second book). If two books have the same shelfmark, but one is written by Freud and the other by Bion, the book by Bion will be before the one by Freud (alphabetical order of authors’ surname).

Accessing your borrowing account

You can access your library borrowing account while using the catalogue by clicking ‘Log in to your borrowing account’ from the items at the top of the screen. You can also access it from the navigation options on library pages.

You’ll need your Shibboleth login to access your account. Once logged in, you’ll be able to see items on your account, renew your loans and place holds on items. You can also use the catalogue to make purchase suggestions.