Self-guided audio tour

The Library has been awarded Customer Service Excellence accreditation in recognition of the way we work to help people like you.  We are continually striving to improve the service we provide, and much of the service you see today is based on ongoing student feedback.  

Please continue through the open glass gate into the atrium for tour stop 2.  Please ask a member of Library staff here if you would like a guided tour of the Library.

The Library is open 24/7 during term-time and the Easter holidays and opens for long hours over the summer.  You can borrow and return any of our 398,000 books any time using the self-service kiosks.  Books you reserve or request through our click-and-collect service are shelved at the collection point in front of you, saving you the time of finding books on the shelves.  Most of our collections are now online, with nearly one million ebooks and 43,000 academic journals available online for you to use wherever you are studying. 

The glass cupboards at the side of the Atrium contain artists' books, boxed sets and other books with pop-up sections, removable parts, interestingly and irregularly shaped covers, or otherwise unsuitable for shelving with our main collection. Students are welcome to borrow any of these books. 

These are brought together through your subject pages on the Library website and the Discovery Service, which makes it easy to search across many of our electronic resources from a single search box.  All this is supported by our friendly professional staff at our help desk, 24/7 online chat, and through telephone and IT support to ensure you always have access to the help you might need.

Please make your way to the far end of the Atrium for tour stop 3.

Drop-in study pods offer isolated study with fully adjustable lighting, while the larger sound-baffling drop-in meeting pods offer informal meeting spaces that contain the noise of people talking while excluding noise from outside. There is an Individual Silent Study Zone on the second floor, the entrances to which are marked with purple banners. The drop-in individual study pods on the ground floor, sound-baffling drop-in meeting pods and group study rooms are also spaces where you will typically experience less noise. Reusable earplugs are available on request from the Reception Desk.

A lift offers easy access to the upper floors for anyone to use. There is also a second lift available to anyone with reduced mobility.

Please make your way past the lift to your right for tour stop 4.

You can borrow full-size laptops with charging cables from the lockers on the ground floor to use anywhere in the Library.  You can also bring in your own devices and connect them to the secure, high-speed wi-fi network or plug them into the docking stations on the upper floors to take advantage of the power and personalised set-up of your device while enjoying the comfort of using a large curved desktop screen, keyboard and mouse.  You can plug any device into the power sockets underneath most tables on the ground floor and the floor and wall sockets on the upper floors.

New books and the current issues of popular magazines and journals are displayed to your right in the café area.  Back issues of printed magazines and journals are available to browse and scan on the second floor.  You can read another 7,000 magazines and newspapers online through the PressReader app and nearly 43,000 full-text electronic journals through our other electronic resources.  We also offer image, sound, animation and video databases, statistical, news, market and company information resources and other specialist databases to support each subject.  

Please head towards the café near the front of the building for tour stop 5.

In addition to the café, there are vending machines available 24/7 and water bottle refill stations near the café and up on the second floor.

To your right, the Near and Far World Books collection is a growing collection of bilingual, translated and foreign language children’s books. It incorporates the prestigious Outside In World: Children's Books in Translation collection of children's books translated into English.  We actively encourage the collections to support research and teaching at the University of Portsmouth and in the wider academic world, and for community outreach work.  These books are included in the Library catalogue and most are available for loan.

Teaching rooms and open access computer rooms around the far side of the building are available for study when they are not being used for teaching.  Postgraduates have access to an exclusive suite of study rooms.

You may have already noticed the diversity of study spaces available in the Library, from conventional islands of desktop computers to diner booths and curved seating areas more suited to group work and the sofas of the Book Nook near the Library Café.  Keep an eye out for the executive swivel chairs and other types of seating elsewhere in the building!

Please head back to the atrium and through the green framed glass double doors into the next part of the building for tour stop 6.

The Library also houses the largest open access computing suite on campus, complete with scanners, printers and poster printing facilities.  Like every open access area on campus, the Library an IT Help Desk.  You can also get IT support 24/7 by calling the IS Service Desk.

There are books on every floor of the Library arranged in subject order.  The classmark sequence starts in the far right corner and increases as you move across the floor and up through the building, bringing together books on each subject in turn, from computing and human sciences on the ground floor up to literature and geography on the top floor, with everything else in between.  Please ask any member of staff if you are looking for a particular subject area.

Using the mobile version of the Library website on your phone, you can find books and see an annotated floor plan showing where you can find the particular book you are looking for, making finding everything you need much easier, even outside staffed hours.

Please head past the large, white IT Help Desk and up the central concrete stairwell to the first floor for tour stop 7.  If you have any difficulty climbing stairs, please feel free to use the nearby lift.

More traditional study spaces and the book collection continue on the upper floors.  In the far corner ahead of you and to your left, you can find the Map Library.  This offers a unique set of printed maps and advice on using our extensive digital cartography software suite.  We have a dedicated map librarian to help you with all your cartographic needs.

Please continue through the double glass doors and across the footbridge for tour stop 8.

As you follow this side of the first floor, you will pass some of our bookable group study rooms.  These group study rooms can all be booked up to two weeks in advance.  Most include a plasma screen to which you can connect a laptop and practise presentations.  There is also a larger bookable meeting room on the ground floor.

Towards the landing at the far end of the floor, students and staff are invited to display their artwork, hobby crafts, project work, and anything else suitable for a general audience. We have hosted many displays, ranging from photographic studies exploring national and cultural identities to local history and creative works from illustration and artists' books to reclaimed glass sculptures and Roma art. The Library would be delighted to to help you create and promote your display/exhibition.

You can also see an exhibit from the University Archive on display in the glass case on the landing.  You can book an appointment with the University Archivist, who can help you discover and use archival materials related to the history of the University and the local area. 

Thank you for taking this self-guided tour.  The wooden stairs lead back down to the Atrium and foyer, where your tour started.  The lift at the far end of the floor will also take you down to the Atrium.  Please feel free to explore the rest of the Library at your leisure.  If you would like any guidance or have questions, please ask any member of library staff.  Once again, we hope you enjoyed your brief tour and hope to see you again soon.