Q. How do I join Senate House Library?
A benefit of Brunel’s University of London membership is that students and staff can use the facilities and collections of Senate House Library. Senate House Library (SHL) is one of the UK’s biggest academic libraries. The library collections focus in the arts, humanities and social sciences areas, but there is useful resources for every discipline. As a Brunel user you can access some of SHL digital databases and journals online. You can also visit the physical library in central London and browse the resources in person.
To access the SHL library collections online follow the 'How to join' instructions on the Current students and staff membership | Senate House Library | University of London. You should use your Brunel email and network password to sign in. The first time you sign in, you will have to fill in some requested information about your level of study and interests.
You will then be able to search for and access resources via the online catalogue or the A-Z Databases. Please note, that some digital resources are limited to on-site access only. You can check the Permitted Uses in the A-Z Databases section.
If you would like to visit the library itself, you should visit the membership desk on the 4th floor of Senate House to get a library card. You will need to bring your Brunel ID card with you on this visit. Membership needs to be renewed once each year for ongoing access.
Additionally, you can make some Senate House Library online collections finable on Google Scholar searches by adding SHL to your list of Library links. Library links makes visible links to the full-text or pdf of a work in the results page on Google Scholar, so you can more quickly and effectively find the whole work in your affiliated library collection.
To add Senate House Library, open the Settings area in Google Scholar and look for ‘Library links’ in the menu options. Then within ‘Library links’ search using the terms ‘Senate House Libraries’. Select the option ‘Senate House Libraries – University of London – Access at SHL’. The next time you search for articles in Google Scholar, you will see the new option ‘Access at SHL’. To read the full-text you will need to sign into your account.