Collections
The Library holds:
- Books, videos, DVDs & CDs
- A Reading Room Collection of books and photocopies selected by your lecturers
- Journals and magazines
- A Reference Collection of dictionaries, encyclopaedias and directories
- Birkbeck PhD and MPhil theses (held in store)
- Archives:
Birkbeck eLibrary provides access to:
- ejournals
- ebooks
- databases
- BIROn - Birkbeck Institutional Research Online
- past exam papers
- online images
- referencing software
Books, videos, DVDs & CDs
Books are arranged on the shelves by subject and given a shelfmark, which can be found by using the Library catalogue. There are two sequences of shelfmarks in the Library. Most materials have a numerical shelfmark e.g. books about management are shelved at 658. Some older material has an alphabetical classmark e.g. books about management are also shelved at IWS.
Videos and DVDs are shelved in the audio-visual section on level 1 and CDs are usually kept at the Issue Desk.
Our online tutorial called LIFE - Library Induction For Everyone shows you how to use the catalogue.
Reading Room Collection (RRC)
The RRC contains books and photocopies of journal articles and book chapters selected by lecturers. It is located on level 1 of the Library.
- These items cannot be borrowed
- Photocopies are assigned a P/C number and arranged numerically in red folders.
All items within the collection are listed on the Library catalogue.
- For books, search the catalogue by author's surname and title keyword.
- For photocopies, search either by the title of the article or book chapter, or search by author (NB. if it is a book chapter the author of the chapter might not be the same as the overall editor of the book).
Our online tutorial called LIFE - Library Induction For Everyone shows you how to find RRC items on the catalogue.
Journals
Print journals are located on levels 3 and 4 of the Library and arranged alphabetically by title. Our online tutorial called that LIFE - Library Induction For Everyone shows you how to tell the difference between a book and a journal article reference on a reading list and how to use the catalogue to find print journals. See also our ejournals pages for information on how to find and access online journals.
Reference collection
This collection of print dictionaries, directories and encyclopaedias is located near to the Help Desk on level 1 of the Library.
Theses
Birkbeck PhD and MPhil theses are kept in a closed access store. To request one of these theses fill in and submit the online form. Requests placed on Sunday to Thursday will be available after 13:00 the next day. Requests placed on Friday, Saturday or Sunday will be available after 13:00 on Monday.
For more information see our Searching for theses guide
