If you are needing help with finding information for your dissertation, you can email or book an appointment with our Academic Liaison Team. See the Academic Liaison box below to find out who your Librarian is. 

You can contact us to help with: 

• Exploring your topic - refining your topic and getting help finding the best ways to identify what information is available and where there are gaps in the research. If you are wanting to see if there is enough information for you to research your topic, we can help too.
• Carrying out a literature search
  • ​finding books, journals, statistics, financial data, archival sources for your research. Google Scholar may be fast and easy to use, but you will be missing lots of useful information if you limit yourself to just that.
  • developing a search strategy to make your search more effective and efficient 
  • using advanced techniques - tricks to help you get the most of the databases you use and to ensure that you don't get overloaded with too much information or miss important references 
  • analysing search results - using cited reference searching or tools to analyse your search results
• Doing a systematic review
• Looking for financial information or data - start with this helpful guide for information on Companies, Markets/Industries, Financial or Economic Data, but contact us if you need more help
• Using Special Collections - Contact Special Collections to arrange an appointment to view archives, rare books, or photographic collections, but if you aren't sure about using this service you can speak to us first. 

Hilda McNae and Vicki Cormie are the Senior Liaison Librarians at their subject responsibilities are divided by School. Sharon is the Liaison Librarian with particular responsibility for ELT and she is also an expert on referencing. 

Contact details:

General enquiries: library@st-andrews.ac.uk

Hilda McNae: hmm9@st-andrews.ac.uk

Vicki Cormie: vhc1@st-andrews.ac.uk

Sharon Nangle: sn45@st-andrews.ac.uk

From L-R: Vicki, Hilda and Sharon:

If you need to get away and concentrate on working on your dissertation, have you thought about working in a different place? The Library has a number of different spaces which are open all year-round. For opening hours and locations see the Library Spaces page.

Referencing can be a minefield, there are many styles and each style has its own idiosyncrasies.  The Library has a useful guide to the main Referencing Styles used at the University, with lots of examples. 

Have you considered using Referencing Software? Tools like EndNote and Mendeley will help you use you store your references and journal articles in one place. Most also come with a Word plugin which will format your references and bibliography in your desired style as you write your dissertation. It's best to start using it as you begin your research. 

You can sign up to a class Endnote or Mendeley on PDMS .

If you find that the library doesn't have a journal article or book which you require for your own research you can use the Inter-Library Loans Service.

If you think a book would be a useful addition to the Library collections, please let us know. We can purchase books for the Library and put them on hold for you through our MoreBooks service. Just email :morebooks@st-andrews.ac.uk

You will need to consider copyright if you are planning on using images or text in your dissertation. You may be covered by 'fair dealing' but if you aren't sure then read this useful document

For more general information about copyright, please see the University's Copyright for students page.

You can chat online with a member of Library staff, this service is available:

• Monday - Friday 9am-5pm