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When looking for sources to inform your dissertation or research project, you may need to consult materials you don't have access to via UCL. There are various ways to do this.
On this page:
Our Interlending & Document Supply team will be providing an e-service only for all UCL students, which will be free of charge during the library closure period. Requests for interlibrary loan material can be requested as normal via Explore:
For up to date information see our Interlending & Document Supply pages.
Senate House Library is the central library of the University of London, with extensive collections in the arts, humanities, social and historical sciences. UCL students and staff who are already registered members of Senate House Library can access their online resources.
For UCL students and staff who aren't currently members, Senate House Library have implemented a new system that enables you to register for Senate House e-resource access. This access is on a 4-monthly rolling membership. Register using the University College London link in the list of institutions.
UCL staff and students can use other, non-UCL libraries and catalogues, including where UCL has made special access arrangements with other UK institutions.
For details of useful union catalogue such as Library Hub Discover, libraries with special UCL arrangements, other libraries in London and libraries outside London, please view our Other Libraries available to UCL students and staff page.
We welcome suggestions to purchase materials that we don't currently have available. Materials will be purchased in electronic format wherever possible.
In Explore you can find Open Access (OA) content from the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) and the Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB), as well as from other platforms. OA gives you access to content outside UCL subscribed resources.
UCL Discovery (UCL's institutional repository) and UCL's Research Data Repository contain freely available versions of papers, books and datasets produced by members of academic staff at UCL both now, and in the past.
Remember that just searching Google can bring up not only illegal copies of material, but also inadvertently support predatory and fake journals.
There are now tools that allow you to search the web for trustworthy Open Access content from inside your web browser. The recommended tool is called Open Access Button.
If you are finding it difficult to find resources that you can access online, contact one of our specialist librarians.
Open Access is part of a wider movement that promotes free exchange of knowledge and resources in order to widen access and encourage creativity.
Researchers and research institutions (like UCL) make articles, books or datasets freely accessible so that society as a whole can benefit from it. Open Access research is aimed at other researchers and it's often peer-reviewed, which means that the information, contained in it, is trustworthy, accurate and well presented.
