Students and staff at schools and colleges

School visits to our libraries are currently paused, we will update this page when we can offer visits in the future.

Get in touch with our Widening Access Team to hear about outreach events, opportunities, and more.

We have compiled some links to freely-available library resources for schools.

UWE Bristol's library search

The library search is the best source of information about the books, journals (magazines), and other materials available in our libraries.

You can search for material on any topic and for a particular book if you know the author and title. Our printed books and magazines are available to members of the public who join as visitor members.

Library search guide

Web gateways

Web gateways and search engines are useful starting points for finding your way around the Internet and identifying reliable sources of information.

• Credo Reference provides links to information on all subjects through its topic pages, some of which are free for anyone to use.
• Resources for your subject web pages (created by UWE Bristol Library) provide links to useful websites which are, for the most part, available free of charge.

Databases

Databases provide information about what has been published in magazines and journals. One or two of these are available free of charge, so it would be worth exploring these, for example:

• Google Scholar provides a simple way to search for academic literature, helping you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research, though not all the articles listed will be available to you, if you’re not students at UWE Bristol.
• Open-access resources such as the Directory of Open Access Journals and OpenDOAR, the Directory of Open Access Repositories, provide information about a wide range of journal articles, reports and other papers which are made available by universities and other research institutions free of charge.

Our study skills resources bring together a wide range of study skills support available to students at the University. Much of the material is free for anyone to use and is particularly useful for sixth form students considering applying to university.

University libraries

Other universities in the area may be able to offer support.

Public libraries

Public libraries are an excellent place to find information and material about school and exam topics. For example, try LibrariesWest or the Wiltshire Public Library Service.

Many public libraries subscribe to online databases which library members can use free of charge, both within the libraries and at home. You can make enquiries and become a member at your local branch.