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You are here Using the Library > Off Campus Access

Off Campus Access

Access is available to licensed electronic resources (books, databases and journals) to registered students and staff, irrespective of where they are located.
  • For staff, access to off campus resources is independent to signing the Library Bond
  • Off campus access is not available for UK electronic legal deposit, UK eLD, material
  • Off campus access to electronic resources is not available to visiting readers, who may only use these resources when physically in the Library
  • Users experiencing difficulties with their College username and network login password should contact the IT Service Desk
  • Users experiencing difficulties accessing a specific electronic journal (e-journal), electronic book (e-book) or database from off campus should contact their Subject Librarian

Access via the Library website and Stella Search

If you are a registered student or member of staff, it is possible to access all our online information resources from off campus (with the exception of UK electronic legal deposit, UK eLD, material). Simply follow the Databases and E-Books A-Z links or links in Stella Search and login, using your Trinity username and password as directed. It is essential to login otherwise the service provider will not recognise you as being from Trinity.

For academic staff and researchers using College's VPN, we *strongly* advise using the Google instructions/method below to access articles. Access via the Library website and Stella Search requires you to disconnect from the University VPN.

Lean Library - access PDFs via Google and Google Scholar

The Lean Library extension provides quick and simple access to digital content purchased by the Library of Trinity College Dublin. Install the extension, select Trinity College Dublin, and it will automatically detect when you are on a website that contains content the Library subscribes to - the extension icon will turn green and a pop-up will explain what to do.

It will automatically give you the Trinity version of Google Scholar and makes it much easier to find PDFs when you start in Google, Google Scholar, PubMed and so on.

Download Lean Library

If the content you'd like to use doesn't seem accessible, the extension will automatically check for Open Access versions of the article. We are currently working on a final alternative of offering an Inter-Library Loan request form if an OA version is not available - watch this space!

The pop-up will also show on a few popular websites where we have alternative access via a different route, such as the Irish Times and Financial Times - here, the icon will turn orange.

If you prefer to search for articles using Stella Search that is still perfectly possible, but we advise installing Lean Library just in case you ever need to find an article via Google or Google Scholar.

Lean Library is not a replacement for our subscription databases – if you need to use Scopus, Westlaw, MEDLINE and so on, go to our Databases and E-Books A-Z and access them there. Databases will usually already have links called "Check TCD e-journals" or "Full Text Finder" to help get you PDFs. It will also generally not be useful for books, e-books, or chapters in books and e-books.

Bonus - search any phrase in Stella Search!

Once Lean Library is installed, you can highlight any phrase on a webpage, right-click, and select Search in TCD's Library Catalogue to look up the phrase in Stella Search.