Library Opening Hours
Study Space
Our world-class library has a variety of study space options. We have over 1200 seats (including different kinds of seating), bookable private study rooms, an entire floor for silent study, dedicated spaces for postgraduate / research students, and hundreds of thousands of books (plus a huge range of online resources).
Every floor offers high-speed Wi-Fi, quick access and catalogue only PCs. The Library is also home to the Walsingham Garden Room and Café. The café's opening hours can be found on the Catering opening hours page.
Our Lower Ground Floor is a well-lit space that has computers, booths and tables for group and individual working. The Walsingham Garden Room and Café is also found on this floor. For the Café opening hours, see the Catering opening hours.
Our Upper Ground Floor is the perfect space for quiet work. There are booths, tables and other individual work spaces too.
It also has our:
- Library Foyer - an area with tables and chairs before the entrance barriers to the library
- Welcome Desk
- Print journals
- Laptop loans machine - where you can borrow a laptop for 4-hours at a time
Our First Floor is a quiet floor, and is a good floor for quiet individual and group work. There are PC’s, tables and booths. You can eat cold snacks here too.
You will also find:
- Adjustable desks – you can move the desk up and down to get to the height you want
- School Experience area – this area has our school experience collection and PC’s with additional software. For more information on what software these PC’s have, look at our Software installed in School Experience PCs FAQ.
- Study rooms – they are for group or individual use and have a whiteboard, computer and big screen. For more information on study rooms visit our Book a Study Room page
- Postgraduate room - this quiet shared study room has six PCs (four of which are on adjustable height tables)
- Teaching rooms - Teaching rooms 1.20, 1.21, 1.29 and 1.30 can be found on this floor
Our Second Floor is a whisper only floor and is a good space for individual working. You may consume lidded drinks and cold snacks here.
This floor also has:
- Study rooms – for information on these rooms, including how to book, visit our Book a Study Room page
- Archives and Special Collections – this area has an archive room and rare books, original documents and artefacts. For more information on this area, please visit our Using the Archives page
- Rolling shelves - for help on using our rolling shelves, watch our Rolling shelves video below.
Our Third Floor is our silent study area and is recommended for people who wish to focus on their studies without distraction.
You may have lidded drinks but no food on this floor.
The floor also has:
• Two Silent PC Rooms - Weston Study Room and the Maurice & Hilda Laing Study Room: usable by all Roehampton students, these are large silent shared study rooms at opposite ends of the floor that have individual study desks and PC’s.
• Two TVs with VCR players.
• Adjustable desks – you can move these desk up and down to get the desired height.
On every floor we have: 
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Water fountains
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Toilets, including accessible toilets
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Quick use PC’s, which you can use for twenty minutes
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Catalogue use PC’s, which you can use to search the library catalogue
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Select the top image for a larger view of facilities
We also have: 
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A stationery vending machine on the 1st floor; coffee and food based vending machines on the lower ground floor
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Multi-Functional Devices (MFDs), which you can use to print, scan and photocopy on the upper ground and first floors
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Four self-service machines and two book returns machines on the upper ground floor
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Welcome Desk – where you can go to with all your enquiries
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A range of different seating options (select image for larger view of our seating options)
The University of Roehampton are working with AccessAble to provide detailed Access Guides to the buildings, services, accommodation and rooms accross the four different colleges.
Please see the Access Guide for the Library
What We Have
Introduction to the Library collections
The Library’s goal is to maintain and develop a collection that supports students and staff at the University. The selection of resources for our collection is a collaborative process between academic staff, students and library staff. The Library will make sure the resources selected and managed are relevant, engaging, and support the curriculum.
The Library manages collections to enable students and staff to participate in the development and dissemination of world-class knowledge and ideas. To support the ways in which our students learn, we aim to have a broad selection of books and journals available digitally, enabling wider access and providing access to distance learners.
How we purchase
The Library has a goal to provide the books our students need and want. Academics help us support students with their learning by designating resources as essential reading, further reading, or reading for independent study. We aim to purchase eBooks for essential reading and keep our collections current by buying new editions as soon as they become available.
We track book usage and we will buy more copies if an items is in demand. Students and staff can also submit requests for items they want that are not available in the Library, either as an Inter Library Loan or by suggesting them for purchase.
The Resource Lists provide directions to start exploring the wide variety of resources accessible through the Library independently. The Library manages an online collection of over 130 databases of eJournals containing articles, videos, abstracts, and provides guidance on how to explore journals.
Special Collections
The University of Roehampton's rich history also means that we have extensive Archives and Special Collection on site, which you can read more about on the Special Collections page.
The University of Roehampton Library is one of the few in the UK to have a School Experience Collection available for students to use. It includes about 20,000 children’s books (fiction, poetry and nonfiction), story sacks, puppets and big books for storytelling, maths equipment, science resources, religious artefacts, and teaching packs.
Looking for a resource that we do not have?
We try have as many books, journals and articles as possible to support learning, teaching and research at the University. However, there may be times when you need something we don't have. There are a number of ways we can help you:
- If you request an Inter Library Loan, we'll try to borrow the item from another library.
- If you think there's a book we should have in the library you can fill out our Suggest a Book form.
- You can visit over 170 academic libraries in the UK using the SCONUL scheme.
You can also contact us.
Donations Policy
We appreciate that staff, students or external stakeholders may sometimes wish to donate books, periodicals or other materials to the Library. Whilst we understand the motivations behind this, it is usually not cost-effective for us to accept donations unless they very significantly enhance our collections to support the teaching, learning and research needs of the University.
Please see our complete Donations Policy below.
Computers & Laptops
In the library we have over 200 computers available for use.
The computers and laptops share much of the same software. The PC’s in our 1st Floor School Experience area also have some more specialist software. You can find out what software we have on our computers by looking at these lists (all pdf documents):
As well as our standard PCs, on each floor we have:
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Two quick access PC’s – these are great if you have something quick to do
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Two catalogue PCs – these are set up for catalogue use only, so you can search our catalogue without logging on to a computer
Many of our study rooms have computers with large screens, which are great for group work.
Students can borrow our 4-hour borrowable laptops via the LapSafe machine on the ground floor. You can borrow one laptop at a time and as soon as you've returned one, you can take out another.
For help borrowing a laptop, please speak to Library staff or view our how to borrow a four-hour laptop and our how to return a four-hour laptop infographics.
For security and privacy, all your work will be deleted from the laptop once you close the lid or the laptop runs out of battery. Make sure you save your work regularly using a USB or cloud storage - we recommend using your University OneDrive account.
If you are a student or staff member and require a laptop on a more long-term basis, please contact AVR to log a request. More information can also be found on the AVR Moodle Page.