Welcome to the Library Search Help Page. This list of 'Frequently Asked Questions' provides guidance on the essentials of using the Library's discovery tool.
For help with using Library Search to construct more advanced searches, see our Search Skills Guide.
If you have a specific question, you can jump straight to the answer by clicking on the links below:
Library Search is the search and discovery tool for the major collections available through the University of Sussex Library. You can use Library Search to discover books, ebooks, journals, digital media, news articles and other types of sources.
Library Search searches our books and journals, content available through the Library’s databases, and a huge index of article-level content (including journals, conferences, newspapers and more).
You can refine your search results using the filter options available on the left hand side of the page. You can select multiple filters simultaneously. This will help to narrow your search and remove irrelevant resources.
There are a number of filters available, including:
Item Type
Author
Creation Date
Availability
Subject
Journal Title
Language
Collection
Sort By
Applying these filters will limit your results so they only include sources matching those criteria.
You can also exclude results that meet certain filter criteria; to do this, hover your mouse over the filter text and select the red, crossed-out tick icon when it appears.
Once applied, Library Search will remove any results that fall into that selected filter category. 
When you make changes to your search or run a new search, the filters you’ve selected will be removed automatically. To “lock” your filters in place for the rest of your library search session, select the 'Remember all filters' button under your active filters.
How do I sign in to Library Search?To sign in, click on the ‘Sign in’ button located on the top right hand corner of the Library Search homepage and enter your University of Sussex log in details.
Signing in will allow you to save individual items and searches, place requests on unavailable items, place an inter-library loan request, and gain access to full-text materials.
If the library has online access to a resource you will find a link under 'View Online' heading. You will need to be signed in or enter your University of Sussex credentials to access the resource.
Watch the video below to see for a more in-depth overview of how to access eBooks you have found using Library Search.
Welcome to our tutorial on accessing eBooks. In this video, we will look at how to access the ebooks that you want to use during your studies.
Let's start by heading to the university's library homepage and scrolling down to Library Search, where we can then enter a relevant keyword for the topic we are interested in. So, for this video, we'll use the term ‘gentrification’. Once we hit search, we'll be taken to our list of results. As we can see here, we have over 10,000 results for this particular keyword. And already we can see a couple of books at the top of our results. But if we are looking specifically for books with this search, we can head over to the filters on the left hand side and within the Item Type filters, we can add the books filter to narrow our results to only show us books. This reduces our number of results significantly and makes browsing the results a lot more manageable.
As we look at our results, we can tell which of the items are ebooks as they will be labelled with either 'Online access' or 'Full text available' underneath the title. This tells us that these items will be available electronically as ebooks. On the other hand, any books you come across labelled with a small book icon and 'Available at library' along with some location information, will be physical books that will be found on the shelves within the library building itself. It's worth noting that when an item has the 'See all versions' label above the title, this means that as well as the electronic version, there will also be a print version of the book, which we can see here. So for this item, you can decide which you'd rather work with. If we now head back to our list of results.
So, let's imagine that this item, Gentrification by Lees, Slater and Wyly is a book we're interested in. How do we go about accessing it? First off, let's click on the title to open up the item details. From here, we can scroll down to see a description of the book along with various other bits of information. And if we scroll back up to View Online and we click on the 'View full text' option, this will take us through to the ebook on whichever ebook platform it's being hosted. So, in this case it's taken us to ProQuest's Ebook Central.
And when it comes to accessing the book, we've got a few different options. So, if we select the 'Read Online' option, the book will open up in our browser and we're free to start scrolling through the pages. We also get a number of navigation options on the left hand side. So rather than scrolling through the whole book, we can use the table of contents to jump straight to a particular chapter that we're interested in. For example, chapter two 'Producing Gentrification'. By clicking on it, it will take us straight there.
Alternatively, we can use the 'Search within book' option to search for keywords within the book. For example, if we were particularly interested in gentrification within London, we could try search for the keyword 'London'. And not only will Ebook Central tell us how many times the word appears within the book, it will also break down how often the word appears in the different chapters.
We can then click on a chapter where our word has appeared frequently. Chapter four, here, for example. And then be shown how many times London has appeared on each page. So if we click on page 133 which mentions London six times, we are taken straight to the page. We can scroll down and we can see our keyword highlighted in the text. This is often a nice way to quickly see how relevant a book or a particular chapter is to our topic.
If we now click on 'Book Details' on the left and on 'More...', we will be taken back to the main landing page.
As well as reading online, we also have two options to download content from the book. We would almost always recommend 'Download PDF Chapter' as the better option. The best way to do this is to scroll down the page to the table of contents and select the chapter that you are interested in. So, for our example, we'll go for chapter four as we've just seen how relevant it looks to our topic. So, if we hit 'Download PDF', and just select 'Download'. We'll now have a PDF copy of the chapter that we can open in whichever PDF reader we normally use.
The big benefit of downloading single chapters is that this PDF is now yours to keep on your device. It's important to note, though, that each book will have a different allowance for how many pages you can download due to the copyright. So, we can see that with this book our allowance was 85 pages, but this has now dropped to 51 after we downloaded chapter four. This would mean we still have enough allowance to download at least one more chapter. It's also worth returning to the ebook at a later date, as often, these allowances will renew.
The reason we would normally advise against using the 'Download Book' option to download the whole book is that rather than download, we are, in effect, loaning the book for a specific amount of time, often just 24 hours. So, while we do get the whole book on our device, it will disappear after the loan comes to an end. Downloading the book will also require us to install extra software to open the book on our device.
Before we finish, it's worth noting that while Ebook Central is probably the most common platform for ebooks, you will invariably come across a number of other e-book platforms during your studies. For example, Cambridge Core, JSTOR, EBSCO, among several others. And while we cannot cover all of these providers, almost all of these platforms will have similar functionality to what we've just covered in Ebook Central, and all should allow you to download PDF chapters.
That's all for this video on accessing ebooks. Thank you for watching.
If the library holds a physical copy of a resource it will be listed under the 'Get It' heading. Here you will find the resource's availability and its class mark (e.g. LL 100 ALE), which will help you find the resource on the shelf.
By selecting 'Locate' you can bring up a map of where you will find the resource in the library:
Once you've made your way to the right area in the library, use the range guides (on the ends of the shelves) to find the shelf you're looking for:
In this example, our book (class mark LL 100 ALE) falls between LI 18000 and LL 40000 so will be on the left row of shelves.
Books are arranged alphabetically (LL), numerically (100) and then alphabetically again (ALE). Follow the numbers and letters along to find the item you're looking for.
How do I request an item? If the physical item you are looking for is already on loan, you can reserve the item and prompt it to be returned by placing a request.
To request an item that is on loan, click on the ‘request’ button found within the ‘request options’ tab.
Make sure you confirm by clicking 'Send Request'.
You will receive an email when your requested item is ready to pick up from the library.
How do I Renew My Loans?Your library loans will renew automatically before they're due date. This only changes if another user has placed a request for an item you have on loan, in which case you will receive an email alert asking you to return the item within one week.
If you cannot return your item due to extenuating circumstances, please contact us via chat or email for advice.
You can view the items you have on loan by signing in to Library Search, clicking your name, and selecting 'My Loans' from the drop-down. This will give you the option to renew your items manually.
If you would like to save an item for future use, click on the pin icon to save it to your library account (you will need to be signed in to do this).
To access your saved items, click on the pin at the top right of the page.
To quickly create a citation for an item, scroll down to the 'Send to' heading and select the citation icon.
You should then select the referencing style you will be using in your work on the left-hand side (check with your tutors if you are unsure).
Library Search will generate a citation for this item in the selected style, which you can copy to your clipboard using the button underneath the citation.
Remember: Always check this citation is accurate before including it in your own work, as citation generators are not always correct.
For more guidance around referencing, check out the Skills Hub page on Referencing and academic integrity.
The University of Sussex holds a number of archival, manuscript and rare book collections, including:
These collections are held at the University and are discoverable in Library Search.
You can limit your search to either the Legacy Collection of BLDS collection using the options in advanced search:
Items from the Legacy collection and some items from the BLDS collection will need to be requested in order for you to view them. To do this, sign in to library search and click the 'Request' option:
The rest of The University of Sussex's special collections are held at The Keep. These can be searched via The Keep’s website.
For more information, see our Special Collections pages.
If you come across a source/item you would like to access, but it isn't included within the University of Sussex's collections or subscriptions, we can try borrowing a copy of the item from another institution on your behalf. This is called an interlibrary loan.
Before placing an interlibrary loan request, please check if the universit
y has a copy of the item you're looking for by searching for it in library search.
If your search doesn't return any results, a 'place an interlibrary request' link will appear under 'Suggestions.' Click this, sign in with your university details, and fill out the form to place your request.
Please provide as much information about the item as you can, as this will speed up the request process.
You can also place an interlibrary loan via the "find and request books" button on the Library homepage.
Where possible, we will deliver requested articles direct to your email account using the Secure Electronic Delivery service, unless you select an alternative option in your request form.
When an item can't be shared electronically, we will provide a physical copy. You will receive an email when your loan is ready to collect from the library's main service desk.
For more information, see our interlibrary loans pages.