Eresources: your questions answered

Top advice on common access issues experienced from off-campus.

We’re open online and working to make sure that you can access the resources you need to study and research remotely.

Here you’ll find the key things you need to know to get access to our online collections, with answers to the most common questions we receive and top tips for making the process easier:

Subscribed resources through Library Search
Ebooks
Can’t find it?
Libkey browser plugin
Google Scholar links
Open access material
Online access for SCONUL and public visitors
Other Library services are available

Subscribed resources through Library Search

We subscribe to a wealth of eresources and digital content that you can access through Library Search.

Top tips for online access through library search:

Sign into Library Search to get more seamless access
There are now two ways to restrict your search to items we have online once you have done your initial search:
- select the “Available online” option from the drop-down menu in the search box
- select the “Available online” filter under Availability on the left hand menu
If you choose to use the filter, you can lock it so you don’t have to set it each time:
- On desktop, hover over the active filter and a lock icon will appear, select it to make it persist for your session
- On mobile, go into the filter icon at the top of the search results and tap the active filter to make the lock appear
Check in the full record of the journal or resource to see which years are available – we don't always have access to every item listed on a publication's website.

Ebooks

We have ebooks available from over 20 providers, which means we have a tremendous range of titles. It also means that there are some differences in how you can access them, as access depends on the provider and the publisher.

These are the three most common ebook issues:

Limits on use
Some titles have limits on how many people can use them at the same time. If you can’t access a title you will probably see a message indicating that the book is in use. If you see this then please try accessing the title again in five minutes or so. Please log out or close your browser window once you have finished, so others can access it.
Downloading and printing
Some titles allow you complete access so you can download a chapter or the whole book and print it out (within copyright limits). However, some titles restrict how much you can print or copy. You can usually find out about any copyright restrictions on the ebook website.
Kindle compatibility
There is no way to get our library ebooks onto a Kindle device, unless the PDFs are downloadable with no restrictions.

Can’t find it?

If you are a current student or member of staff and find something in Library Search that you can’t access, contact us and we will try to help you find it.

It’s helpful if you can give us some information so we can help you more quickly:

full details of the book, journal article or database you are trying to find or access
how you have tried to access already – what link you followed in Library Search, or on a publisher site, what error message(s) you received
what browser you are using (eg Chrome, Edge, Firefox).

We are available online or through email from 9am-5pm every day and we’ll respond as soon as we possibly can.

If we don’t have an item physically or virtually in stock, you can also suggest a purchase and we will try to get an online copy.

Libkey browser plugin

If you use Google Chrome, you can install a browser plug-in that could make finding the full text of journal articles easier.

LibKey Nomad automatically provides links to full text content, for articles we subscribe to or open access alternatives, as you do research on the web and come across literature. In each case, Nomad works with our collections information to figure out the fastest path to content across thousands of publisher websites. Special enhancement is also performed in-line on sites like PubMed and Wikipedia.

After you install LibKey, select “University of Leeds”. When you visit a website with journal article content, a pop-up will appear with the online access link.

Get Libkey Nomad from the Chrome store

Google Scholar links

If you use Google Scholar, you can choose to show University of Leeds links in your results.

From the Google Scholar menu, go to Settings, then Library links, then search for Leeds. Choose University of Leeds: Check@Leeds from the list and save.

Open access material

A number of publishers have taken down their paywalls and opened up their material to support us during the coronavirus outbreak. We've collected these together in a blog post and will continue to update this if more become openly available. The last update was on 13 May.

Open and available: additional resources from publishers during the COVID-19 outbreak

There are also a number of open access repositories that make articles available. Some appear in Library Search, but you may wish to explore these as well:

Online access for SCONUL and public visitors

Unfortunately, SCONUL users and others with external access are not able to access our resources from off-campus. Please try your home institution’s library or you may wish to check out the collection of open resources mentioned above.