Sources For Courses: Primo (Part 1)

Of all the resources the University subscribes to, it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll be using Primo right from the start of your degree.

As the library catalogue, Primo gives Aberystwyth University students details on all items in the University libraries, as well as a vast range of online databases to further your research. It also acts as the access point for your library account, enabling you to view and renew loans, pay your fines and request books from our External Store.

To get off to the best start with Primo, it's recommended that you always Sign in using your Aber username and password.

It's likely that you'll want to use the service to find a book or journal for your course. Primo makes this very simple. If the item you're searching for is in one of the University libraries, make sure that the search option Aberystwyth University is selected. This limits the results to the items you'll find on our shelves, as well as their online counterparts if available.

You can narrow these results further by using the Refine My Results links. For instance, if you are working in one of the University libraries and only want to see items near you, click the name of that library and items in other locations will be filtered out.

Next you'll need to find the item on the shelves. Click the title of the item you want and then click the Locations tab. You'll be shown how many copies of the item there are, where they are located and their Classmark.

If the Status of the item is listed as Not Charged it'll be on the shelf. Make a note of the Classmark and use it to locate the item. If you're not sure where to start looking there are floor plans on levels E and F of the Hugh Owen Library. For more help with this, take a look at Karl's Finding a Book video.

That covers the basics and should help get you started if you need to find course books. In my next blog we'll take a look at the more personalised side of Primo - saving items to the E-shelf and managing your loans.

We hope your year is getting off to a good start!

If you have any questions or comments, or would like to arrange training or a refresher for online resources at Aberystwyth University, please contact:

Academic Services
acastaff@aber.ac.uk
01970 621896