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The Library

Discovering the Library

Warwick University Library is a world class resource for academic research. We not only stock thousands of books, we also have also academic journals, newspapers, magazines and microfilm that sixth formers can access. Unfortunately, you will not be able to access a lot of our electronic information because this is only licenced to our current students. Find out how to plan your visit.

Did you know?

There are over 1.3million books in the Library!

We spend over 4.3million a year on Library resources!

Books

We have over 1 million books in the Library to cater for all our subjects. To see which subjects are offered at Warwick, please see our subject support.

How to find a book

To find a book in the Library, you need to look it up on the Library Catalogue. Check that the status of the book is available and the location is in the Main Library.

Classmarks

Books are organised in the library using the classmark system. A classmark is a series of letters and numbers (e.g. QC 981.G56 E3) which is like a map to tell you where a book is located. Some books within a subject area will have the same classmark so make sure you also note down the title and author.

More about classmarks and locations.

Where do I go?

There are maps by the lifts on each floor of the Library to further assist you to find the book you’re looking for. If you aren’t sure where a book is located, please ask at the Helpdesk on the first floor for assistance or view the floorplans for details of how to find your way around.

Schools collection

On the fourth floor of the Library, we have the Schools Collection.

This contains some A-level books which may be useful for your research. You may find it worthwhile to spend a little time browsing the shelves to see if there is anything that could support your research project and give you an inroad into understanding your topic more fully.

Newspapers and journals

We stock back collections of many journals such as, The Economist, Nature and The New Scientist, which might be useful to browse for your research.

Please see our other guides for advice on using the Library.

Free resources - Open Access

Open access means the unrestricted access (you do not have to pay or be a part of a University) to peer reviewed research articles, available on-line.

You have unrestricted use but if you use the information the authors have to be acknowledged

Find out more about open access.
Find out more about the creative commons licence.

You can use the following sites to search for articles. They take a bit of getting used to but you’ll find some really useful information.

For Sciences try:

For Humanities try: