Using Library Search: IALS Library Guides

Guide last updated by Katie Radford, August 2025

Library Search allows you to find and access all of IALS Library’s resources in one place, including books, e-books, journals, databases, theses and more. This guide will explain how to use Library Search to search for, find, and access resources, as well as how to understand the records for individual items.

You can use your personal account on Library Search to manage various aspects of your library account including updating your details, renewing your books, and creating and managing your favourite items. Make sure you sign in to your account before you search, as some databases only show results when you're signed in and you will not see the full results if not. You will also need to be signed in to your account in order to access our e-resources.

To sign in to your account, click on 'Sign in' in the top right hand corner. Click on 'Sign in with email' - this should then take you to a University of London page prompting you to enter an email address. In this box, enter the email address that you used to register for IALS Library and click 'Continue'.

The next step depends on what type of email address you are using. 

• If you are using a sas.ac.uk or london.ac.uk email, you should be prompted for a password (the one you use for your SAS email account).
• If you are using an email address from a University of London college (e.g. ucl.ac.uk; kcl.ac.uk), you will be directed to a sign in page for your university where you will need to sign in using the password you use for your university account.
• If you are using a personal email address (Gmail, Outlook, Apple) will need to select your email provider from the 'Continue with your social account' options. This will then redirect you to a sign in page for your email provider where you should enter the password you use for your email account. 
• If you are using an email address from a non-UoL university (ending .ac.uk or international equivalent) or a personal email from another domain (not Gmail, Outlook or Apple), you will need to create an account on the first time you sign in: choose the 'Sign-up with email' option. You will then be asked to verify your email address and set a password. The next time you sign in, you should just enter your email address and the password you have set.  

Once logged in, click on your name and then 'Library card' to see your account. From here, you can manage various aspects of your library account.

Once you are logged in to your account, you will be able to see a list of books that you have on loan in the 'My Loans' section. It is from here that you will be able to renew your books online:

1. Make sure you have signed in to your account.
2. Click on your name in the top right-hand corner, and then 'My Loans'.
3. You will see a list of all books on loan to you. Next to each item there will be a 'Renew' button, like the screenshot below.
4. Click on 'Renew' and if the renewal has been successful, you will see a yellow message giving you the new due date. 

Please let us know by emailing ials@sas.ac.uk or contacting us via our Live Chat if you have any problems with renewing your books online. Please note, you are only able to renew your books three times online. Once you have renewed an item three times, you will have to return it to the library and if you still need it, we can reissue it to you. You may also be unable to renew a book if another reader has placed a hold on it.

Use the search bar on the homepage to perform a quick search across all our collections, in print and online. When you enter your terms in the search bar, Library Search will ask you to choose where you wish to search. Choosing the 'IALS Library' option will mean that you are searching within the IALS library catalogue records, and is the best default option to use if you are trying to identify items in our collections.

If you choose 'articles', this will search for your terms within the text of articles that are available in electronic format. Choosing 'everything' will search across both the IALS library catalogue records and full-text electronic resources. If you are looking to identify journal articles, using the 'articles' or 'everything' searches can be useful, but be wary that they can produce large numbers of results if your search terms are too broad.  

You may also see an option to search on SAS Space. This is an Open Access repository for digital scholarly and research materials produced at, or in association with, the School of Advanced Study, University of London. 

You can also use the filters underneath the search bar to narrow your search down to a specific type of resource. 

This main search bar also allows Boolean searching if you wish to make your searches more targeted. As such, you can use operators such as AND, OR, and NOT, as well as using inverted commas (double quotation marks) for phrase searching. See the advanced search section of this guide for more information on how to perform more complex searches.

Use the advanced search function to find items using fields such as title, author, classmark, and subject heading. The advanced search allows you to be more specific in your searching, so it can be useful if you are finding too many results through other searches. It may also be useful if you are looking for a particular item, or if you want to combine multiple search criteria. For example, you can use the advanced search to run an author / title search, or to search for items with multiple words or phrases in different fields. You can also apply filters for material type, language and date.

Search fields

Using the advanced search, you can enter search terms and specify which field you would like them to be included in. You can choose from the following fields:

• Title
• Author/Creator
• Classmark
• Subject
• ISSN or ISBN

As well as specifying the field in which you wish to find your search terms, you can also choose how you wish the search terms to appear in the field. The options for this are:

• contains - the search terms will be contained anywhere in the selected field.
• contains exact phrase - the search terms will be contained in the selected field in the exact form in which you enter them (similar to phrase searching using "inverted commas").
• starts with - the selected field will begin with the search terms, but may contain additional words.
• equals exact phrase - the selected field will match the search terms exactly and will contain no other words.

You can combine multiple different search terms in different fields by adding additional lines to your search. Search terms and fields can be combined in several different ways:

• AND allows you to add in additional terms that must also be found in the search results.
• OR allows you to add in alternative terms so that your search results may display either one term or the other.
• NOT allows you to restrict your search so that results containing a specific search term are not retrieved.

Click on 'ADD A NEW LINE' if you wish to add further search fields.

For example, the screenshot below demonstrates an advanced search for items with the whole phrase "dispute resolution" in the title, which also have the term 'comparative' contained somewhere in the subject headings, but which do not have the word 'finance' in any field.

After running a search, you can refine your results using the 'Tweak your results' menu on the left-hand side of the screen. This menu allows you to sort your results by various different criteria, including by relevance, date, or alphabetical order of title or author. There are also a range of filters that can be applied to your results, including by location, subject or availability. 

Use the browse option to look through lists of titles, authors, series, classmarks or subject headings. This can be useful if you are not looking for a specific item, but would like to browse through the library's holdings.

You can choose to browse by: 

• Title
• Author (last name, first name)
• Series (books in series; for series of law reports or journals, browse by title)
• Classmark
• Subject (controlled subject headings)

Once you select the field you wish you browse by and enter your terms in the search box, you will see an alphabetical list of results. These are displayed as hyperlinks that you can then click to see a full list of individual items.

For example, the below image shows the results of a browse search for items with human trafficking in the subject headings. A full list of items is displayed when you click on the individual hyperlinks for each subject.

Once you have scrolled to the bottom of the list, click on the arrows in the bottom right-hand side of the screen to display subsequent alphabetical results.

Each individual item on Library Search has its own catalogue record, which contains key information about the publication. At the top of the record, you can see the key publication information, as well as the availability of the item at IALS Library. If the item is held in print in the library, it will say 'Available at Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library', followed by the classmark, which indicates where you can find the item on the shelf. If the item is an e-resource, it will say 'Available Online'.

There is further information about how to find the item further down the page in the 'Get it' Section. Here you will see whether the book is available or out on loan to another user, as well as how many copies are held and the classmark where it is kept in the library. See our guide to Classmarks and finding resources in the library to find out more about classmarks at IALS Library.

If the record is for an electronic resource, there will be section here called 'View Online' which will contain a link or multiple links to follow to access the item electronically through IALS Library's subscriptions. For more information about accessing e-resources, see the Electronic resources section of this guide. 

Further down the catalogue record, you will see the full bibliographic details for the item. This contains additional information about the publication, as well as subject headings that have been assigned to the item by library staff to describe what it is about. The subject headings are hyperlinked, so you can click on them and it will lead you to a list of results that have been assigned the same subject heading. You can do the same with the authors, co-authors or editors and it will display other publications to which they have contributed. If the publication is part of a series, there may also be a hyperlink to the series heading to display other titles in the series.

At the bottom of the record, there is a 'Virtual Browse' gallery. This replicates the physical shelves in the library, as the items here are displayed with other items with adjacent classmarks. This may be helpful if you wish to browse through other books on a similar topic. 

Library Search also contains the records of all the electronic resources in the IALS Library collections. When searching or browsing on Library Search, you can identify an e-resource as it will say 'Available Online' on the search results screen and the individual catalogue record. 

We are still setting up access to e-resources on the new system. Currently, access to all e-resources is working on site in the library, and remote access is now available for most databases. We are working to reinstate remote access to the remaining e-resources as soon as possible. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience and do get in touch if you have any questions. 

Currently, the best way to access all e-resources is using the links to a database on our A-Z Databases page. To do this, find the database you need from the A-Z list and then follow these steps:

• Click on the 'Access Database' button at the top of the page. This will open the Library Search record for the database.
• Make sure you are signed in to your Library Search account. (See Your account section of this guide for advice on how to do this.)
• On the Library Search record, you should see a 'View Online' box containing the access links:

• To access an e-resource inside the library, click on the link: 'view full text link' Access onsite at IALS and you will be taken straight to the database.  
  • You will need to make sure you are connected to our WiFi network (UoL Research Libraries) in order for this to work (see our WiFi guide for further details).  
• Where remote access is available, you will see a link that says 'view full text link' Remote access like in the screenshot above. Click on this link and you will be taken a log-in page:

• Choose a user group from the list.
  • For most IALS Library members this will be 'Login for Library Members'.
  • For SAS/IALS students and staff, choose the 'SAS Students and Staff' option. 
• This should take you straight into the e-resource provided that you are logged in to your Library Search account. 

Please note, there are a few databases with different log-in methods for remote access than the process described above. These include: Westlaw UK and International Materials; Practical Law; i-law; and Lexis 360. Please see the relevant page on the A-Z of Databases for further information on how to access these databases. 

Please let us know by contacting us on ials@sas.ac.uk or via our Live Chat if you experience any problems with accessing e-resources.