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

2. A-Z database guide
3. List of online journals
4. Ebook collections
5. Reading lists

Get lean library for easier access to eresources

Ever been stuck behind a paywall for a journal article, newspaper article, or ebook?

Lean Library is a browser add-on that makes it easier to get access to these resources. Land on a webpage where you can't access a resource and Lean Library can give you a link directing you to the full-text version available through the Library subscription, or an open-access version. It saves you time looking for a login button or having to go back to Library Search to look up a title.

You can install the Lean Library browser add-on in most browser download.leanlibrary.com/

More information about Lean Library can be found in our guide libguides.st-andrews.ac.uk/lean

Contacting the Library

Email Library@st-andrews.ac.uk with any questions

Chat with Library staff online, Monday-Friday 9am-5pm

Phone the Library Service Desk:

44+ 1334 462331

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/

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 thesis
Library web page for help with finding St Andrews, UK and international theses.
British Library EThOS
Contains over 300,000 e-theses from UK institutions.

Proquest Dissertations and Theses with Full Text (PQDT) This link opens in a new window
this is a subscription resource, but also a good place to look for theses.

Open Access Documents

CORE
BASE

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 window
Over 11,000 archive films from the British Film Institute's national and regional archives.
Box of Broadcasts This link opens in a new window
BoB 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 window
over 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 window
provides free access to thousands of items of archived European TV footage
Kanopy This link opens in a new window
an 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.
Off campus access
-click on Connect Now button
-login with your university username and password
Moving Image Archive This link opens in a new window
The 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 window
hundreds of TV and radio programmes from the BBC’s Shakespeare collection, as well as more than a thousand photos from classic Shakespeare productio
To access resource:
-select the item you wish to view
-select "watch"
-either register for an ERA account using your University email address
-or sign in using an already created account (University email address and chosen password)
OR
-Select "Sign in" from options at top of page.
-Follow registration/sign in intructions above

Digital theatre plus This link opens in a new window
Provides 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 window
five 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 Plays
fully 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 window
digital 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 window
Over 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 window
over 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 window
national 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 window
presents 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 window
Millions 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 window
fully 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 window
extensive 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 window
unique 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 window
The UK Medical Heritage Library is the culmination of a three-year project between JISC, the Internet Archive, the Wellcome Library and nine other partner institutions to digitise more than 15 million pages in over 66,000 works. With full colour page scans, PDF downloads and OCR machine-generated full text for all publications, the collection is a valuable resource providing a broad and diverse range of relevant publications from the 19th century (Formerly available via JISC Historical Texts)
University of St Andrews Image Database This link opens in a new window
a 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 window
Scottish learning resource base with over 360,000 images & media from museums, galleries, archives and the media