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Services for distance clients

The library is here for you, wherever you’re based.

Who are distance clients?

The library provides additional services to support distance clients. Distance clients include staff and students undertaking online study, not based at one of our campuses at Camperdown or Darlington, living outside the greater Sydney region or with a mobility or health issue.

Distance client services are subject to eligibility and registration. If you have registered for distance client services prior to Monday August 3, 2020 you will need to re-register using our new registration form. Please see Eligibility and registration for distance client services.

Key Services available for distance clients

Remote Academic Liaison Librarian consultations

Academic Liaison Librarians can be contacted via email and are available for online appointments to support postgraduate by research and honours students, and academic and professional staff.

Visit our Contact a librarian page for email details or to book an appointment.

Discounted membership to other University Libraries in Australia and New Zealand

Is there another Academic library nearby to you? University of Sydney staff and students can join participating Australian and New Zealand university libraries at a reduced cost.

Apply directly through participating University libraries.

Postal Loans for items from our collection

Distance students are eligible to have items from our collections sent via post (within Australia).

  • Items can be sent to your home address, Westmead Hospital Library, to a Rural Clinical School or to another hospital library – whichever is most convenient for you.
  • This excludes items from our short loan (previously 2 hour loan) collection and special items that cannot leave the library.
  • The library will cover postage charges to send the item to you. However, it’s your responsibility to pay return postage charges.
  • Standard borrowing conditions apply.

Place requests for Library owned items through Library Search. You should select Personal Delivery: Home address as a pickup location.

Borrowing items from partner libraries through Resource Sharing

If you need an item which is not available from University of Sydney Library collections, you may be able to borrow it or request a digital chapter or article from a partner library. If an item you need is not available from University of Sydney library collections or a partner library, you can make a “Special request for an item not found” and we’ll do our best to access it for you.

Limits and conditions apply.

Find out more about borrowing through Resource Sharing

Online resources

Much of the library’s collection can be accessed online, including journal articles, book chapters, eBooks and eJournals.

You can access online resources through Library Search and selecting Online only.

Scanned content

Where a digital copy of a book is not available, we can send you scanned images from the item in our collection. This is subject to legal copyright limits (1 chapter or up to 10% of an item, whichever is greater).

Place requests for Library owned items through Library Search. Please provide full citation details to avoid delays on processing your scan.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples are advised that this website may contain images, voices and names of people who have died.

The University of Sydney Library acknowledges that its facilities sit on the ancestral lands of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have for thousands of generations exchanged knowledge for the benefit of all. Learn more