Among the oldest libraries in California, USC’s Libraries are also among the most innovative in the nation, recognized pioneers in building digital collections and resources in online education.
USC’s Libraries remain one of the most heavily used resources on campus and converge with almost every aspect of campus life. Students, Alumni and friends utilize the library system to access library expertise, materials, and equipment and also to collaborate and exchange ideas with fellow students and professors.
USC Libraries are crucial to the success of USC’s teaching, research, service and community outreach priorities.
- Overview of Services
- Information for Alumni, including facilities access and borrowing privileges. To give recent graduates time to join the Alumni Association, the USC Libraries extend library borrowing privileges and remote access to databases and electronic resources for one semester past the last semester of enrollment in courses.
- Information for Friends of the Libraries, including facilities access and borrowing privileges.
Please note the following:
- Remote access to USC Libraries' electronic databases, electronic journals, electronic books, and other research websites is for the exclusive use of current USC students, faculty (including part-time), staff, post-docs, and official visiting scholars registered with a home department. Electronic resources are governed by license agreements, and the terms of use are set by the publishers and vendors from which they are subscribed.
- Library privileges are not transferable to other individuals, and the library reserves the right to request secondary picture identification before allowing access to facilities or providing services.
- Only USC students, faculty, staff, alumni, and sponsored guests may be present in libraries open after 9:00 p.m. or before 7:00 a.m. All patrons will be asked to present their physical USCard, digital USCard + a government issued picture ID (for USC students enrolled in USC’s online programs), an Alumni Association physical or digital card + a government issued picture ID, or library-issued USC identification during these times.
- Accessing Resources
- Special Collections – The USC Libraries' Special Collections is a non-circulating research library open to the general public. Please consult these guidelines for first-time visitors.
- Research Guides – These are created by librarians and point to subscription-based and freely accessible resources on particular subjects and disciplines.
- DOAJ The Directory of Open Access Journals includes freely available peer-reviewed journals on all subjects.
- DOAB: Directory of Open Access Books provides open access to over 854 Academic peer-reviewed books from 25 publishers.
- SSRN The Social Science Research Network has material from across a broad range of the social sciences and includes conference papers, journal articles, book chapters, and more
- ArXiv.org Open access to nearly 800,000 e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics, and related fields.
- https://www.plos.org/ PLoS – highly regarded journals in the area of science, particularly biological sciences.
- PubMedCentral Full-text archive of biomedical and life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health's National Library of Medicine (NIH/NLM). NIH grant recipients are required to deposit their final, peer-reviewed manuscripts in the PubMedCentral archive upon acceptance for publication, with this content to be made publicly accessible within 12 months of publication.
- Sage Open – Communication, Education, Psychology, and other social science journal articles published with Sage Open.
- USC Digital Library includes photographs, images, and other digitized collections. Includes over 56,000 USC published theses and dissertations.
- Digital Public Library of America - Digital collections, books, photographs, and other formats searchable in one place.
- The Los Angeles Public Library offers borrowing privileges to residents of Los Angeles, and this includes access to electronic resources.
- Other Services