FAQs

Librarians help students develop information literacy: "a continuum of skills, behaviours, and approaches and values that is so deeply entwined with the uses of information as to be a fundamental element of learning, scholarship and research" (Coonan, 2011, pg. 5).

The American Library Association defines six underlying concepts of information literacy:

• Authority is Constructed and Contextual: Information resources reflect their creators’ expertise and credibility, and are evaluated based on the information need and the context in which the information will be used. Authority is constructed in that various communities may recognize different types of authority. It is contextual in that the information need may help to determine the level of authority required.
• Information Creation as a Process: Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The iterative processes of researching, creating, revising, and disseminating information vary, and the resulting product reflects these differences.
• Information has Value: Information possesses several dimensions of value, including as a commodity, as a means of education, as a means to influence, and as a means of negotiating and understanding the world. Legal and socioeconomic interests influence information production and dissemination.
• Research as Inquiry: Research is iterative and depends upon asking increasingly complex or new questions whose answers in turn develop additional questions or lines of inquiry in any field.
• Scholarship as Conversation: Communities of scholars, researchers, or professionals engage in sustained discourse with new insights and discoveries occurring over time as a result of varied perspectives and interpretations.
• Searching as Strategic Exploration: Searching for information is often nonlinear and iterative, requiring the evaluation of a range of information sources and the mental flexibility to pursue alternate avenues as new understanding develops.

When the University of Toronto Libraries system does not have the book or article that you are looking for, or our copies are currently unavailable, you can request it from another university or institution. This is called an interlibrary loan request.

More information on how to use the service is available here. 

MyAccess is a utility used by UofToronto students, staff and faculty when they are off campus to see resources which the Library licenses for use by its community.  Starting from the UofT Libraries webpage, If you click a licensed resource such as a database or an e-book, you will then see a login screen for MyAccess.  All you need to do is follow the instructions on the page which appears.

LibrarySearch is where you can search for books, articles, journals, videos, and other content that the library owns or subscribes to.   

WebsiteSearch is where you look for information about the library such as hours, locations, FAQs, IT support, and research guides. 

It surfaces pages about library services such as interlibrary loan, Scan & Deliver, computers and wifi, etc., and will also find content from research guides and FAQs.

Students, staff, and faculty are blocked at the point of owing $25.00 in fines.

Direct borrowers are blocked at $10.00 in fines or projected fines for overdue items.

The National Union Catalog (NUC) is a catalogue of books held by over 1,100 libraries in Canada and the United States.  The NUC is composed of two major series: one that covers books published before 1956, and one that covers books published from 1956 onwards.  During the mid- to late-19^th century the increase in the number of universities and researchers resulted in an explosion of the number of books, journals, newspapers and other forms of communication. National bibliographies, such as the NUC, were an attempt to capture the intellectual output of a nation. The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. began compiling the catalogue in 1901, with the goal of identifying every important book in the United States.  As such the NUC became an essential resource for those looking for print materials.

By the early 1960s, the Library of Congress was issuing supplements to the catalogue on a monthly basis; in the face of its growing complexity, they decided to compile all pre-1956 imprints into a single collection.  The resulting catalogue encompassed 754 volumes, contained over 528,000 pages, and weighed three tonnes. Its full title is National Union Catalog, Pre-1956 Imprints: A Cumulative Author List Representing Library of Congress Printed Cards and Titles Reported by Other American Libraries.

The National Union Catalog may be found printed in its entirety at the Library of Congress, though many other libraries (including U of T Libraries) hold a subset of the catalogue.  While online union catalogues provide easy access to bibliographic information, studies have shown that some old and rare titles are only recorded in the print NUC. For this reason it remains an essential tool for scholars. 

Truncation is a wild card symbol--usually an asterisk*--that allows you to search for multiple endings of the same root word.  Examples:

Truncation broadens your search to get more results, but it can also bring back results that aren't necessarily related to your topic (ie. Canadarm for Canad*).

Downloading and reading e-books onto an e-reader depends on the format. Two common formats in University of Toronto Libraries' (UTL) e-book collections are PDFs (to read a chapter, or section, of a book) and ePUBs (to read the whole book): 

PDFs

Many of UTL's e-book providers will allow you to download a portion, or a chapter, of the book in PDF, as allowed by the publisher. PDFs can be read on most e-readers, including Kindles, iPads, Nooks, Sony Readers, and Kobos.

ePUBs

Some e-books can be downloaded in full, or 'checked-out', for 14 days using Adobe Digital Editions 3 (ADE) software. Devices such as Sony Readers, Nooks, and Kobos will work with ADE. Refer to the list of ADE supported devices to learn more.

If you have an iPad, e-books from UTL's ebrary collection can be downloaded through the ebrary app, after creating an Adobe ID. The Bluefire Reader app also supports PDF and ePUB file formats, and also requires an Adobe ID.

We encourage Library users to make every effort to return their borrowed materials on time.

Items will automatically renew at the end of each loan cycle until your maximum renewal period is reached, unless your items have holds or recall requests. If you do not renew or return borrowed items on time, late fees will be charged. You can check your due dates online. 

You can also proactively renew your items:

1)  Online

2) By emailing libraryhelp@utoronto.ca 

You have a couple of options. You can request that a copy be returned early by placing a recall request, or you can submit an interlibrary loan (ILL) request to obtain it from another institution. Consider ILL if there are multiple requests on U of T copies, or if the item is missing or otherwise unavailable.

To submit an interlibrary loan request, first sign into LibrarySearch to see your request options. Once you are signed in, select "Get it from outside of U of T" in the item's record. 

An auto-populated request form will appear. Confirm the details are correct, choose a pickup location and select "Send Request". 

After your request is submitted, you can check your LibrarySearch account for updates on the status of your request(s). You will receive an email once your request is available.

You can also submit an interlibrary loan request using a blank request form, or when your catalogue search returns no results. 

Beginning June 1, the RACER interlibrary loan (ILL) request form will be retired and replaced with a new ILL request system based in LibrarySearch. More information on this change. 

Although access to RACER will no longer be available, any requests submitted through RACER prior to June 1st will remain active. You will be notified through email when your request is processed. 

A book "dummy" is a wooden block that sits on the shelf in the place of a book that has been moved elsewhere.  If you pull it out, it should tell you where the book has been moved to.

Not all scholarly articles are peer reviewed, although many people use these terms interchangeably. Peer review is an editorial process many scholarly journals use to ensure that the articles published in journals are high quality scholarship. 

If you've been asked to find "scholarly" articles:

• Clarify with your professor or TA if peer reviewed articles are required.
• Check the journal in Ulrich's to see if it is peer reviewed.
• Use a library database to search for articles.  Most databases have features that allow you to limit to peer reviewed articles.
• Ask Chat with a Librarian for a librarian's opinion about an article.

Library hours are listed on each library's information page or on their individual websites.

Never! U of T students should never pay for articles because, most of the time, you have already paid for them via your tuition!

The University of Toronto Libraries (UTL) have one of the biggest collections of journals in the world. Most likely we have what you want. Before you pay for an article, try these steps:

1. Try the search box on the library home page or one of our other article-finding tips.
2. Don't give up. Check with us to see if we can find it for you.
3. If the article really isn't at UTL, you can request it via interlibrary loan.

And finally, connecting Google Scholar to the library's resources makes it really easy to get the article.

Located on the first floor

How to get there

By elevator

• Take the P5 elevator to the first floor
• Look for the loans desk as you walk towards the Robarts Library main entrance revolving doors

By escalator

• Take the escalators to the first floor
• Turn left into the computer workstation area.
• Turn right and walk towards the Loans Desk just before the Robarts Library main entrance revolving doors

Before we started using Library of Congress classification system, Robarts books were catalogued using the 'Old Class' system.  Many older works are still catalogued this way.

Journals & periodicals

• Journals and periodicals: 9th floor Robarts, ranges 6–14
• Distinguished by a letter P at the beginning of the call number
• Example: P LE N

Monographs & pamphlets

• Monographs and pamphlets are in Robarts storage
• Sometimes mistakenly marked as 'Stacks' in the catalogue record
• Pamphlets distinguished by "Pamph" at beginning of the call number
• Example: Pamph. HAm. S.

Pencil sharpeners are available in the following locations in Robarts Library:

• 3rd floor in the Media Commons and in the Petro Jacyk Resource Centre
• 4th floor
• 5th floor in the Map and Data Library.

Robarts Library

• First floor (includes one colour printer)
• Fourth floor
• Eighth floor (Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library)

Gerstein Science Information Centre

• Main floor (includes one colour printer)

OISE Library

• Ground floor

Noranda Earth Sciences Library

• Main floor

Math Library

• Main floor

Engineering and Computer Sciences Library

• Main floor

John M. Kelly Library

• Main floor (one colour printer, one black and white)
• Second floor
• Third floor
• Fourth floor

E. J. Pratt Library

• Main level

John W. Graham Library

• Main floor (one colour printer, one black and white)

Missed a printer?  Let us know in the comments.

Water fountains are available in the following locations in Robarts Library:

• 2nd floor: in the food court and outside food court entrance
• 3rd floor
• 8th floor
• 9th floor
• 10th floor
• 11th floor
• 12th floor
• 13th floor
• 14th floor

Online

Our research guides can show you how to find government documents and statistics online. We have digitized much of our physical collection and made it available through the Internet Archive.

Many online items are listed in LibrarySearch. To find them, search for your topic or the relevant government agency and limit to online. Click the "Available Online" link to open the item.

In the library

Print copies of government documents and publications are housed in Robarts 12th floor, Robarts storage (available by retrieval request), Bora Laskin Law Library, the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, OISE Library, and other locations. LibrarySearch will tell you where each item is located if it is not available online.

Help

• User Services, Robarts Library
• Bora Laskin Law Library for legal sources

Our group study rooms page lists all of the available rooms at University of Toronto Libraries and how to book them. 

• Robarts Common has 8 group study rooms on each of its 5 floors
• Floors 9–13 at Robarts contain 4 group study rooms on each floor
• They are named: Harbord, Sussex, St. George – see map below
• Each of these rooms can be booked in advance

We subscribe to many full text digitized archival collections.  Browse for a collection by title or topic.  

You can search and explore the archival holdings of the University of Toronto and its federated colleges at Discover Archives.

We have also produced several U of T digital collections like Heritage U of T which collects images, text, and rich media about the University of Toronto's history.

Looking for something specific?  Search the catalogue or ask us!

OISE is home to the Ontario Historical Education Collection (OHEC), which includes old curriculum documents, primarily from the Ontario Ministry of Education.

Access to the Collection is by appointment only, and items cannot leave the library. If you are not accessible to Toronto, you may request photocopies through your home institution's Interlibrary Loan services.

To book an appointment, please contact us at oise.library@utoronto.ca.

The Map & Data Library has a computer lab with statistical software. Beginning May 1, 2024 the 5th floor of Robarts is under renovation and the Map & Data Library (MDL) computer lab has been merged with the Robarts 4th floor electronic classroom. 

MDL computers with GIS and statistical software are marked with an MDW on the desktop.

For more details, please see the list of available statistical software  

You could also purchase a copy through the Licensed Software Office (LSO).