National Centres library membership

Support and services for staff and students based around the country

Students

Once your enrolment is fully processed by the Division of Education and Training, you should receive your Shibboleth/Institutional login by email. This will enable you to access all of our online services, such as databases, ebooks and journals. For the full range of services that the library offers, please see the library homepage.

Teaching and clinical staff

Tutors and clinicians working on behalf of the Tavistock and Portman are entitled to library membership. You can apply using our online staff membership form

Loans and renewals

Students and staff can borrow up to 10 items at one time by post when they are not already available online. These are posted out to you free of charge, and you can return items using our Freepost label.

Items are issued for a period of four weeks initially and may be renewed twice. Two weeks into this borrowing period all items could be subject to recall by other library members. Please return items when requested to do so.

Please note that if a book you request is already on loan to another library member, it might be some time before it is available for posting. If you need a book urgently, please check our library catalogue to see if it’s available as part of our ever-expanding collection of ebooks.

Borrowing restrictions

In addition, certain types of material are excluded from the postal loan service, including:

Renewing items

Items may be renewed twice, providing they are not required by another reader. To renew items, first log in to your borrowing account using your Shibboleth details. To renew individual items, click the box in the ‘renew’ column then click one of the ‘renew selected’ buttons at the top or the bottom of the check-out area. To renew everything you have on loan, click one of the ‘renew all’ buttons. You will not be able to renew items that are on hold for another library member.

Overdue items

Only one overdue or recall notice is sent to library users for items that have been borrowed. Users who do not renew or return items within two weeks of the notice will have their loan account suspended until either the item is returned, or payment is made to cover the replacement costs. Please note that replacement items must be purchased by the library: substitute copies bought by readers will not be accepted. There is a standard replacement charge of £50 per item.

Users who fail to return the items or pay the replacement charges within two weeks of their account being suspended will have all other library privileges suspended, including their Shibboleth accounts, and the matter will be referred to the Finance team for further action.

It is essential that you keep us informed if you change your email address as notices will be sent out via email. If you maintain a list of safe senders for your email account, please add add library@tavi-port.ac.uk and tavistocklibrary@koha-ptfs.co.uk to this to prevent the messages from being blocked by your spam filters. If you have more than one email address please let us know which you would prefer us to use.

Photocopying services

National Centre library members can request a copy of book chapters or journal articles to be supplied by email (subject to copyright permissions). Please contact the library with your requests. All items supplied are for non-commercial personal use only and should not be shared or distributed.

Inter-library loans

Journal articles and books that are not in stock in the library may be obtained from the British Library. A fee of £8 per request is usually charged for this service. Please give as much accurate publication information as possible. Please note the British Library will not allow us to send books out to regional sites, however they will be happy to send them directly to you and you would then return them to the British Library. Please use our inter-library loan online form to make a request.

Using other academic libraries

University of Essex Libraries

For students on University of Essex validated courses, you’ll be contacted by the Tavistock and Portman with your personalised registration form, which will enable you to register for a University of Essex student card. Once you have received your University of Essex student card you will be able to use the University of Essex libraries

Use a library near home or work

Students holding University of Essex or University of East London (UEL) student cards can use other university libraries participating in the SCONUL scheme.

If you are a student on a University of Essex or UEL validated course but have not yet received your registration form or UEL student card, please contact your course administrator.

Help with online resources

Need some help? Consult our help pages or check our information skills Moodle page (Shibboleth login required for Moodle).

To organise group online training, please contact the library.

Box of Broadcasts audio and video

Box of Broadcasts (BoB) is an audio and video streaming platform that has millions of programmes available to watch and listen to. See our webpage on BoB to get started.

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