Skip to Main Content

Ocean and Earth Science: Books

Subject guide for oceanography and earth science.

Reading lists

Your reading list is your starting point for resources to support your studies. Search our reading list system to find the recommended reading for your modules.

Start your search for a reading list

Guidance for first time users of our reading lists system

Off-campus access to library resources

We subscribe to thousands of online resources and sometimes, you might be asked to input your university username and password before you can access them. Find our guide to accessing online Library resources off-campus.

How Can I Find Books On My Topic?

Use Library Search. the library catalogue to find books

Borrowing books from the Library

Find out more about borrowing books from our library guide.

Includes information about:

  • how many books you can borrow
  • how long you can borrow the book

Can't Find What You're Looking For?

Books

  • If the University doesn't have the book you need, you can use Library Search to suggest a book

Journal articles

  • To connect to library resources such as databases and journals you will need to use the University’s VPN service called Globalprotect. Advice on how to set your connection up can be found on the iSolutions page How do I set up VPN on my device? 

  • Unpaywall, Open Access Button and CORE Discovery are all Chrome and Firefox extensions that find legal open access copies. Open Access Helper works the same way for iOS and Safari

  • Kopernio a Chrome extension that finds articles from our library subscriptions and open access versions
  • Google: if you find an article that is behind a paywall, try copy & pasting the article title into a search engine. If there is a copy in a repository it will often display on the first page of search results 

  • Still no luck? Try our interlibrary loan service. We will try our best to get hold of articles for you, although it may not be possible or be delayed while libraries are closed

PhD/ MPhil theses

  • the library holds print copies of all University of Southampton doctoral level theses; these are listed on Library Search
  • many of these are now also available online from ePrints Soton

Undergraduate/ taught masters dissertations

  • The Library does not normally hold undergraduate or taught masters dissertations

 

Ocean and Earth Science Undergraduate dissertations / Taught Masters dissertations / PhD Theses

Dissertations

The National Oceanographic Library houses the Ocean and Earth Science collection of undergraduate [3rd year project] and taught masters [Thesis (Masters)] dissertations. The dissertations written in the most recent few years up to 2019 are shelved in the library at the end of the books sequence. All of the dissertations up to 2019 are listed in the library catalogue

Dissertations from 2020 onwards are stored as electronic versions on the SOES Dissertations SharePoint site - [request permission to assess the site] please note that currently there are no Geology or Natural Science projects available.

Thesis

The National Oceanographic Library holds print copies of all the Ocean and Earth Science, University of Southampton doctoral level theses in our archives; these are listed on the library catalogue and many of these are now also available online from ePrints Soton Please ask staff at the Help Desk if you need to see a printed copy of a thesis. 

Book Suggestion Form

Use this online form to suggest a book we should buy for the National Oceanographic Library.

Collections and finding items at the National Oceanographic Library

The National Oceanographic Library uses an in-house classification scheme

If you need assistance finding materials please speak to library staff at the Help Desk who will be pleased to help you.

The floor plan of the National Oceanographic Library which shows the layout of the collections.

These guides explain how to identify materials in the printed journals, Loose Papers and Reports collections on Library Search and where they are located in the National Oceanographic Library.

Finding books in other Libraries