The classmark is the number you will need to find your book on the shelf.

Your book will have a near-unique shelf mark, and this will dictate where it ends up in the library, so make sure you write it down carefully!

Remember to write down all of the numbers and the letters, too. The letters usually correspond to the surname of the book's author.

Dewey is a classification system that we use to organise the books in the library. In this system, every single book is given a dewey decimal classmark. Books on a similar topic will usually be found together, e.g. Chemistry textbooks all get inserted into the sequence at 540. 

Because there are so many topics in existence, dewey decimal classmarks can get quite complicated. Remember to look at each number after the decimal point individually - so 541.02457 comes before 541.22, even though it has loads more numbers! 

See also that 540 EBB comes before 540 MAC - that's why it's important to also have the letters that go with the numbers of your classmark.  

Ebooks are available from each university - these can be accessed from home and in most cases can be used by multiple people at once.

Search your university LibrarySearch, and select ebooks from the left-hand menu. If no ebook option appears, it simply means we don't have any ebooks for that search, but you can always try a different search. Check out the video below for more help. 

Reference copies of books cannot be borrowed or taken out of the library. They have a yellow 'reference only' sticker stuck to the side above their classmark.

We buy reference copies of our most popular items so that you can access the text in the library even while you are waiting to borrow a copy. 

Did you know you can use our scanners to photocopy pages or sections from a book? This is a good way to get permanent access to a key chapter, table or diagram! 

The index of a book is one of your most powerful tools. Quite often, when you search our catalogue for keywords relating to your assignment or project, you might think that you can't find anything relevant. 

This is probably because we don't have any books that have all of your quite specific keywords mentioned in their title. Instead, you should do a search for books on a more general subject and then check their index to see if they contain a chapter about your chosen topic.

E.g. A book search for "heart attack" only brings up 1 result, but a basic search for 'emergency medicine' delivers more than 80 results, all of which will certainly contain chapters or pages about heart attacks when you check the contents page or index.