Library Search is the Library’s catalogue. You can use Library Search to search for books and ebooks. You may be looking for a particular book because it appears on your reading list, or you might be conducting a keyword search for books relating to your topic. Remember, Library Search doesn’t search for the titles of book chapters (except for some ebooks), just the title of the book.

You can also use Library Search to check if Warwick subscribes to a particular journal.

Although Library Search will return results for journal articles, the databases are much better for this type of search. The Articles tab in Library Search doesn’t include all possible results, whereas searching within a database is much more comprehensive and manageable.

The Library subscribes to a number of different databases which you can access as a Warwick student. The databases contain different types of information and will often have a different subject focus. You should think of a database as a mini search-engine or online platform containing lots of information you have access to as a Warwick student.

The journal databases will allow you to conduct a search for articles across thousands of subject specific journals. There are also databases containing company financials, legal cases, manuscripts and newspapers, for example. This information would not appear in Library Search so it is really important to use the databases when conducting your research.