Material not in our collections or subscriptions needed to support individual academic study or research should be requested. Please note that we may not be able to get copies or loans of some items due to item availability or copyright restrictions.

Before you place a request for an interlibrary loan, please confirm that the material is not available by searching Library Search, ensuring you are signed in to view complete results. We are not able to process requests for items we already have in our collections or subscriptions, either in print or electronically, or which are available open access. Unless you are looking for a specific paper, please consider making maximum use of the materials already in our collections and subscriptions, or those that are available open access.

Journal articles, book chapters, and conference papers will be supplied electronically, where possible,e to your University of Sunderland e-mail address. Print books must be collected from St Peter’s Library or Library at Murray, as postal loans for this type of material are not possible. E-books are not available through the interlibrary loan service.

You can place a request using the Interlibrary Loan form, or using Library Search.

Some materials may be available freely online, such as review papers, open-access journals, and government publications.

We are unable to process interlibrary loan requests for theses and dissertations.

• SUnderland REpository (SURE) - You can view the research outputs of the University of Sunderland by visiting SURE, our research repository. This is a collection of book chapters, journal articles, reports, artworks, PhD and MPhil theses, conference papers, and many other items.
• Open Access Theses and Dissertations (OATD) - OATD provides access to open-access graduate theses and dissertations published around the world.
• Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations (NDLTD) - NDLTD is an open-access database which holds electronic theses and dissertations, either submitted electronically by the authors or digitised from printed theses and dissertations.
• EThOS (currently unavailable) - EThOS is temporarily offline.  Unfortunately, the platform had to be taken down as a result of a cyber-attack on the British Library in October 2023. The restoration of the British Library's extensive range of services is being carefully prioritised, informed by user demand. The aim is to relaunch EThOS as early as possible. In the meantime, it is possible to search for digital doctoral theses held in UK institutional repositories via the British Library's online catalogue. From the catalogue's simple search page, you can 'refine your search' to filter by Resource Type 'Theses' or on the advanced search page, select the Material Type 'Theses'. When you have found a document of interest, click on the title to view the full details. If a digital doctoral thesis is held in a UK institutional repository, there will be an 'Available online' link under the title. Please contact the British Library if you have a query about a specific thesis that is not currently available online.

You can also ask the University or author directly if you can access a copy of their thesis or dissertation.

If the material you need is a print book or e-book, consider suggesting the title for purchase through our Suggest a Book scheme.