Accessing the Library Remotely: Home
This guide is for University staff and students to help access online resources when it is not possible to visit one of our libraries in person.
Key Services
1. Library search - tick E-resources only / E-books only below the search box
2. A-Z database guide
3. List of online journals
4. Ebook collections
5. Reading lists
Contacting the Library
Chat with Library staff online, Monday-Friday 9am-5pm
Phone the Library Service Desk:
44+ 1334 462331
44+ 1334 462332
If you have a more detailed enquiry you can set up an online meeting - email Library@st-andrews.ac.uk with some brief information on what you want help with and when you are available and we will arrange a meeting. At the moment this service is only available Monday - Friday 9.00-17.00 GMT but if necessary we can try to arrange meetings at different times.
Access to IT Services
Information about IT Services opening times and locations during the Christmas period can be found here https://itservices.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2021/11/30/christmas-opening-hours-2021/
Searching
The box above will limit your search to online resources only.
Search using the search box on the Library Homepage
There are two search options beneath the search box:
- E-resources only will find ebooks, journal articles, encyclopedia entries, etc.
- E-books only will just find ebooks
- No print resources will be found it either of these boxes is selected.
E-books
On the right of an e-book details is an eBook button
Click the button to access the e-book.
If you need to login use your university email address and password
Journal articles
Some of the journal articles in the results won't be full-text. To limit the results of your search to journal articles you have immediate full-text access to select "Full text" below the Article heading on the filter on the left
The journal articles should all now be full-text articles.
You may not see the details of all the articles - for some you need to login, if you can't see any article details click Login at the top left of the screen, and enter your username and password.
There will be a range of different buttons on the right of the article details to give you full-text access:
Where there's a PDF button use this to access the document, or use the Full Text button to view the web version of the article.
Some articles will have a button to link you to the database the article can be found on:
Use this if there's no PDF button.
For some articles you will only see a Find Full Text button
When you click the Find Full Text button you'll be taken to our link resolver, which will give you a link (or a range of links) to access
Where there are multiple entries, check the date of publication for the article you want (see details to the right of the University logo) and then select the link which includes the date you need.
You may be asked to sign in, use your University email address and password.
In most cases you'll be taken to the article details page on the database or publisher's site it's held on, look for a PDF or full-text option on the page. In some cases you will be taken to the contents page for the issue of the journal the article is published in, scroll through the contents page and select the article you want.
Free Ebooks and Scanned books
Archive.org is a great place to look for older material online with millions of books, films, movies, software and websites.
You may need to create an account to sign in to view some content on archive.org. You can use any email address to create an account. You can "borrow" up to 10 titles at a time.
Google books is another good place to look for older materials, and you may also find content from more recently published books. There are many full text books available, although be warned that many books aren't complete.
See a list of open access books published by Open Book Publishers, Open Humanities Press and others.
Search the OAPEN Online Library: The OAPEN Library contains the full text of peer reviewed OA books which are 'free to read' online.
Search for open access books below in the Directory of Open Access Books. DOAB is a discovery services that points to OA books that can be found elsewhere. All books listed in DOAB have a full OA licence, making them 'free to share'.
Find e-theses
Many institutions now provide archives of electronic theses, and a large number are open access.
- How to find a thesisLibrary web page for help with finding St Andrews, UK and international theses.
- British Library EThOSContains over 300,000 e-theses from UK institutions.
- Proquest Dissertations and Theses with Full Text (PQDT) This link opens in a new windowthis is a subscription resource, but also a good place to look for theses.
Open Access Documents
CORE https://core.ac.uk/ contains over 200 million open access documents.
BASE (Bielefeld University Search Engine) https://www.base-search.net/ for academic open access web resources, indexing over 120 million documents. Try this search to explore some OA material now!
Multimedia
Here you will find a range of online Library resources which provide access to films and documentaries as well as other multimedia resource which can be used in teaching and for dissertation work. This includes links to the Digital theatre plus database and to purchased titles on the Kanopy film streaming platform.
If you are trying to source multimedia content and would like assistance please contact us at library@st-andrews.ac.uk
- BFI Player This link opens in a new windowOver 11,000 archive films from the British Film Institute's national and regional archives.
- Box of Broadcasts This link opens in a new windowBoB is Learning on Screen’s on demand TV and radio service for education; Users can record programmes from over 65 free-to-air channels and an extensive archive of tv and radio broadcasts. You can create and share playlists and clips. NB: BoB is NOT AVAILABLE outside the UK.
- Ethnographic Video Online This link opens in a new windowover 1800 documentary films as well as video, written ethnographies, field notes, memoirs, and contemporary studies, covering human behavior the world over
- EUscreen This link opens in a new windowprovides free access to thousands of items of archived European TV footage
- Kanopy This link opens in a new windowan online streaming service providing access to films and top documentaries. Access is available to a small number of titles only, selected to support current teaching needs.
- Moving Image Archive This link opens in a new windowThe Moving Image Archive is Scotland's national collection of moving image held at the National Library of Scotland, the catalogue provides access to over 2,000 clips and full-length films.
- BBC Shakespeare Archive Resource This link opens in a new windowhundreds of TV and radio programmes from the BBC’s Shakespeare collection, as well as more than a thousand photos from classic Shakespeare productio
- Digital theatre plus This link opens in a new windowProvides online access to a digital streaming video collection of unique films of current, leading British theatre productions. Includes behind-the-scenes documentaries as well as teaching and learning resources to facilitate a deeper understanding of the productions and texts. Learning resources include a detailed introduction, plot summary, character biographies, a relationship map, language analysis, scene study, performance background and historical context for each play. Updates vary.
- Opera in Video This link opens in a new windowfive hundred hours of the most important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries featuring some of the world’s best performers, conductors, and opera houses
- Poetry Archive Audio (via LION)recordings of important contemporary poets
- Shakespeare Audio Playsfully dramatised unabridged recordings of all of Shakespeare's 38 plays. Each play is recorded by noted actors and includes sound effects and music to bring the plays further to life.
- Naxos Music Library This link opens in a new windowdigital sound database - 'the world's most comprehensive collection of classical music online' - containing the complete Naxos, Marco Polo and Da Capo catalogues and titles from 50 other labels; allows streamed access to over 75,000 CDs with more than 1 million tracks. Over 800 CDs are added monthly; 7 concurrent-user access
- British Library Sounds This link opens in a new windowOver 50,000 unique sound recordings from all over the world, covering the entire range of recorded sound - music, drama and literature, oral history, accents and dialects, sound recording history, wildlife and environmental sounds. Smaller subset of sounds is available without logging in at http://sounds.bl.uk
Additional music and sound recordings which are freely available can be found on our guide to Audio sources
- ARTstor Digital Library This link opens in a new windowover 1.5 million digital images in arts, architecture, humanities & sciences, from international museums, photographers, libraries, photo archives, artists, etc. Also has relevance to anthropology, classics, history, literature, music, religion.
- British Cartoon Archive This link opens in a new windownational collection of over 150,000 British social and political cartoons, the work of over 250 British cartoonists, held at the University of Kent; includes 15,000 cartoons from the Carl Giles Archive, which includes rare seaside postcards as well as political cartoons
- Illustrated London News: Historical Archive 1842-2003 This link opens in a new windowpresents a vivid picture of British and world events - including news of war, disasters, royalty, social affairs, the arts and science. Over 260,000 full colour pages, fully searchable and browseable
- ImageQuest This link opens in a new windowMillions of rights-cleared images that can be used by University students and staff for educational purposes. (Please credit photos with Encyclopædia Britannica ImageQuest and the date retrieved.)
- The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera This link opens in a new windowfully searchable colour images of 65,000 items from the Bodleian Library's John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera, offering unique insights into the changing nature of everyday life in the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries
- Photographic Collection (University of St Andrews Library) This link opens in a new windowextensive collection of photography held within the Special Collections Department of the University of St Andrews Library
- Picture Post Historical Archive This link opens in a new windowunique archive of the complete Picture Post, the pioneering illustrated newspaper published in Britain between 1938-1957, and containing thousands of images
- UK Medical Heritage Library (UKMHL) This link opens in a new windowA open access database providing access to the images and full text of over 66,000 19th Century European medical publications.
- University of St Andrews Image Database This link opens in a new windowa collection of images 'primarily intended to support research and teaching purposes within the University'. Includes the extensive Art History Slide Collection, and the Corpus of Scottish medieval parish churches
- SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) This link opens in a new windowScottish learning resource base with over 360,000 images & media from museums, galleries, archives and the media
