Welcome to all new and returning doctoral students at City.
The best way to access all of our resources is from the library website. The main library for the School of Arts and Social Sciences (SASS) is at Northampton Square, if you wish to visit, you can book a study space or computer space from that page, or you can reserve some print books to collect (click and collect). The most current information is in the Covid-19 box on the CityLibrary website.
A useful starting point for SASS resources is our Library guides page, click School of Arts and Social Sciences. There is a guide for each subject taught or researched at City. For example the Journalism guide contains information about key resources, newspaper databases such as Nexis UK, Factiva, PressReader etc and archival newspaper content such as the Times Digital Archive and magazines and databases such as Academic Search Complete and Communication Source Complete. See also our research guide.
CityLibrary search is the library search engine which searches across a wide range of our content including print books, electronic books, journal articles, journals. If you wish to refine your search to electronic items, click Full Text Online from the top left of the search results screen. There is also a Journals A-Z for our online journals and Databases A-Z on the library website. Most of our electronic resources are accessed with your City username and password. We recommend accessing everything via the CityLibrary website which makes it easier to log in with your City credentials.
For Copyright enquiries, see our Copyright guide. Our institutional repository is City Research Online this contains research outputs by our staff and online doctoral theses. It is also worth registering for EThoS, the online thesis digitisation service from the British Library as there are some downloadable doctoral theses there.
If you would like us to order some e-books for your doctoral research, please see our Read for Research scheme
If you use Google Scholar for your research from home, you can set it up to show City subscriptions, click on the Settings menu (top left of the Google Scholar screen), click Library links and then type in City, University of London and then click Save. When you perform a search, you will then see the Is it @ City Library? button appear to the right of results where we have a subscription. The button will help you to link to the full text where available. The Is it @ City Library button also appears in some of our databases and you can always click it to see if you can access the full text of an article for example.
If you are interested in research methods and exploring the research process SAGE Research Methods online (SRMO) provides information on research methods in health and social sciences. It includes several hundred research methods e-books and videos and other content and is aimed at students and academics and is designed to answer methods questions that arise during the various steps of the research process.
For SASS subjects, it is recommended to join the Senate House Library, University of London for remote access to their online resources which are useful for Arts and Social Sciences and the British Library, the national library which is at St Pancras.
The Senate House Library is offering a click and collect service, and is providing access to a limited number of study spaces to existing members. Study spaces must be booked in advance and are available Monday-Wednesday, 11:00-15:00. Remote access to online resources is possible for University of London students by registering using their online form.
The British Library has reopened their Reading Rooms at St Pancras with reduced hours, if you are planning a visit you must make sure you book ahead.
The best way to get in touch with CityLibrary or find an answer to your questions is through our Ask us page or online chat on the library website or through our Training page where we offer online training and appointments. You can also email the library library@city.ac.uk or chat online with our staff from the bottom right hand side of the library website. To report issues with electronic resources you can email e-access@city.ac.uk