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University Library

The University Library will form a central part of your academic career. Our major collections are housed in the Main Library, where expert staff can help students access a wealth of information sources.

Each School has a specialist Academic Liaison Librarian assigned to it. Our Liaison Librarians can be contacted by students for help with finding information sources or for any general issues to do with Library Services. Find out who your librarian is.

The Main Library has recently undergone extensive refurbishment. The second phase of this work will be completed by September 2012. After feedback from students, we have increased our opening hours and have further extended opening hours during exam periods.

The Library has:

• A Café
• Self-service machines for borrowing and returning books.
• A variety of study spaces – individual, silent study zones, open plan areas for group and social study, comfortable seating areas and group study rooms with easy options for booking. State of the art printing, scanning and photocopying facilities.

Tours of the Main Library will be available during Orientation Week. However, if you miss one of our tours, or you need help finding your way around, please just ask a member of staff - we are happy to help at any time.

We also have subject specific Departmental libraries. On the North Haugh site we have the popular JF Allen Library for Physics & Astronomy, Mathematics & Statistics, Biology, Medicine and Computer Science and on South Street we have St Mary’s College Library, which incorporates the historic King James Library, and holds material for Divinity, Mediaeval History, and Honours Psychology.

The Library stock comprises over one million books, thousands of journals, an extensive media collection and many other types of material. You can also access most of our numerous online databases, e-journals, e-books and electronic resources wherever you are, whenever you want!

The Library’s print and electronic collections are currently benefiting from significant additional investment from the University. This means our collections will continue to grow and we invite you to contact us to order more books (morebooks@st-andrews.ac.uk) if you cannot find the material you need.

Our exceptional Special Collections Department houses around 200,000 rare printed books, as well as the University’s fine manuscript and photographic collections and the University archives, which date from the early fifteenth century onwards. The collection is particularly strong in Theology, Classics, History, English and Scottish Literature.

Generous loan periods, reciprocal borrowing rights with local and national universities, and a fast Inter-Library Loan service for obtaining material not in stock, ensure that you have easy access to resources. Self-issue and self-return terminals allow students convenient borrowing whenever the Main Library is open, currently for more than 100 hours per week during semester.