Bloomsbury Collections

Help and FAQs

What types of books are included in Bloomsbury Collections?

Bloomsbury Collections includes scholarly monographs and edited collections in the humanities and social sciences published by Bloomsbury’s Academic division: the Browse by Subject link above displays the list of subjects included. We aim to include all research-based publications in these subject areas for which we have full digital rights. Textbooks and major reference works are not included.

For academic publications in the visual and performing arts, Bloomsbury is developing a suite of platforms dedicated to the unique needs of those disciplines. Berg Fashion Library includes reference works and monographs in fashion, along with the 10-volume Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion and a vast image bank. Drama Online includes play texts and critical and contextual works from the Methuen and Arden Shakespeare lists, enhanced by play tools, character grids and production stills. Contact us to discuss options for your library.

How do I get access to full text on Bloomsbury Collections?

The full text of books on Bloomsbury Collections is available to members of institutions which have purchased the relevant collection to which the book belongs. The Collections page shows the full list of collections which are available for purchase, together with a complete title list. If you are a member of an institution, the books to which you have full-text access are signposted with an open lock icon.

In addition, you can filter your results by 'Availability': select 'Full Text (Subscribed)' to show only those books to which your institution has access.

Why can I read some chapters but not others?

Wherever you see the locked padlock icon this means that your institution has not purchased access to this book, and so you have preview access only: this generally means that you can read the front matter and first chapter of the book, but not subsequent chapters.

What is Bloomsbury Open Content?

Books in Bloomsbury's Open Content programme are free to view on Bloomsbury Collections, as you will see from the 'open book' icon. Selected Bloomsbury research publications are published on open content licenses, meaning that the full text is available online for free in HTML format to ensure that the works are as widely accessible as possible.

These titles are also available to buy as print books and e-books. In addition, collections of Open titles are available for institutional purchase: an institution which purchases access to the books will have PDF downloads enabled in addition to the HTML full text. The Open titles are published under two different licenses:

Creative Commons BY-NC: please see the Creative Commons website for further information
Bloomsbury Open: you are free to share this work for non-commercial purposes only, providing you give attribution to the copyright holder and the publisher. You may not alter or transform this work without explicit permission in writing from Bloomsbury Publishing. Please contact us to apply for permission

Under the Creative Commons BY-NC license, readers are granted the right to copy, distribute and display the work on a non-commercial basis. These works go through the same process of peer review, editing and formatting as our other academic monographs. Authors are not charged for publishing under the Open Content programme, and they receive royalties from all print and electronic sales.

Can I print and download full text from Bloomsbury Collections?

Yes: we offer chapter-level PDF files of all books on the site, and these PDFs have no DRM (Digital Rights Management) protection, and so can be printed or saved to personal computers. All use of the site content is subject to our Terms and Conditions: printing and saving should be for personal use, and standard copyright restrictions apply regarding unauthorised copying and distribution. Different terms apply for Bloomsbury Open content, as specified above.

How do I search for keywords?

Use the main site Search box to search the titles, chapter titles, abstracts, author names and full text of books on the site. The main Search box supports the following search methods:

Stemming: by default, if you search for psychology this will also find hits for grammatically related words such as psychological, psychologist or psychologies
Truncation: use an apostrophe for truncation searching to find words starting with the same string of letters, e.g. psych’ will find hits for psyche, psychology, psychiatry or psychoanalysis
Exact phrase search: use quotation marks to find exact matches for a phrase such as “all’s well that ends well”
AND (Boolean operator): searching for Japan AND Brazil will find books that include both search terms. NB searching for Japan Brazil will have the same effect
NOT (Boolean operator): search for Japan NOT Brazil to find books which mention Japan but do not mention Brazil
OR (Boolean operator): search for Japan OR Brazil to find books which mention either Japan or Brazil (or both)
Nested searching (brackets): search for (India OR Brazil) AND Mining to find books which mention mining and also mention either India or Brazil (or both).

How do I cite texts from Bloomsbury Collections?

From the book page, or full text view, click on the ‘cite’ icon to view formatted citations for the book in APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard citation styles. You can also download a file in RIS format for importing into reference manager software.

Why do some titles display as HTML text and some as page images?

Most of the more recently published titles have been converted from XML files, and so are available to be displayed as HTML full text. This is more convenient for online display, and allows features such as re-sizing of text, easy copying and pasting, re-flowing to fit different sized screens, and internal hyperlinks within the book (e.g. from note references to end notes, and from bibliographic references to the bibliography). Apart from the page layout, the HTML text is identical to the print version, and we have retained pagination information to allow citing page numbers when quoting from these books. Going forwards, the majority of texts added to Bloomsbury Collections will be in HTML format.

However, we have converted a large number of titles from Bloomsbury’s rich backlist which were not available as XML files. For these, we have converted the source PDF files to create a browseable series of page images with a searchable HTML full text layer. When browsing the full text online, the pages load as you scroll down, which saves possible delays while large PDF files load on the page.

How can I tell which chapters are most relevant to my search?

If you search by keyword, the search results page will display chapter-level hits for each book. The two most relevant chapters will be displayed (in order of relevance, not in chapter order), with a link to reveal further relevant chapters if applicable. When clicking through to the book page, hit highlights will be displayed to show which chapters match your search.

Can I access Bloomsbury Collections on a mobile device?

Yes, the site is fully optimised for displaying on a range of tablet and smartphone interfaces. The site has been tested using recent versions of the iPad, iPhone, and Android smartphones and tablets. No web-enabled devices are specifically excluded, and there is no separate mobile site: the site layout adapts automatically depending on the size of the screen.

Which browsers are supported for Bloomsbury Collections?

Bloomsbury Collections has been tested using Internet Explorer (version 8 onwards), Safari (version 6 onwards), and the latest versions of Firefox and Chrome, on PC, Mac and mobile operating systems. We will continue to monitor usage from different browsers and platforms and revise our list of actively supported browsers and devices accordingly.

Can I download texts from Bloomsbury Collections to a tablet or e-book reader?

Yes, chapter-level PDFs are available for all books to which you have access via your institution. PDFs can be viewed on a wide range of devices, including iPads, Kindles and other tablets and e-book readers.

Can I view the original print page layout?

Yes. The chapter-level PDFs are all identical to the print edition, allowing you to see the original pagination and typesetting.

How do I find books from a specific subject area?

You can use the ‘Browse by Subject’ link at the top of every page to view all books within a broad subject area such as Theology or Literary Studies. From the search results page, you can also use the ‘Subject Headings’ filter on the left-hand side to filter your results further. The contents of these filters change every time you do a new search, to reflect the contents of your results set. You can also use the ‘Additional Subjects’ filter to narrow your results further, using more specific subject terms such as ‘Anglican Theology’ or ‘North American Literature’.

Is there a restriction on the number of users who can access titles at the same time?

No, Bloomsbury Collections is available on an unrestricted-user site license. Any number of users can access the same book simultaneously.

Do I need to log in to access the site?

Most institutions will set up their access via IP-authentication, which means that users are automatically ‘logged in’ when accessing through their institution. If you have been recognised as a user from a subscribing institution, this will be signalled by the ‘Access provided by…’ message in the site header.

Some institutions require username and password access: if you are in doubt as to how to access the site, please contact your library.

Does the site support access via Shibboleth?

Yes. If your institution uses authentication via Shibboleth, select this option from the Log In page.

Can I follow links to other online resources?

Yes, if your institution has set up a link resolver, you can follow links from the bibliographies of full-text books to find copies of the referenced works in your library catalogue or other subscribed resources.

Can I save favourites?

Yes. By clicking on ‘My Collections’, you can create a personal profile and an archive where you save books or chapters to come back to later. You can organise your saved items into folders and export citations and links via email or directly into reference manager software.

Please note that the star-shaped ‘favourite’ icons only become active when you are signed in to My Collections. The first time you click on the star-shaped ‘favourite’ icon you will be asked to register in order to create a My Collections profile. Once you are signed in, the icons are active: clicking on the star adds the book or chapter to My Content, and clicking on the star again removes it from My Content. These icons are displayed on the search results page, book page, chapter page and within My Content.

From the My Collections menu, you can select ‘My Content’ to view saved items and create folders, ‘Manage Folders’ to rename, delete or empty folders, ‘Profile’ to edit your personal details, including email address and display name, or ‘Sign Out’ to sign out of your personal account. Signing out will have no effect on your institutional access: if you are logged in via an institution, you will stay logged in.

Within a folder in My Content, you can ‘Remove all’ (this removes all items from the folder which you are currently viewing), ‘Move all’ (to move all items in this folder to a different folder), ‘Cite all’ (export citations for all items in the folder) and ‘Email all’ (email citations, abstracts and links for of all items in the folder, either to yourself or to a colleague, friend or student).

Can I view my recent searches and recently viewed items?

Yes. The top toolbar allows you to revisit the 5 most recent searches and most recently viewed books from your current session. If you wish to save items to come back to in another session, you will need to save them to My Collections.

Can I purchase individual eBooks on a title by title basis from Bloomsbury Collections?

No, titles are only available on a collections basis. You can, however, choose whichever collection or combination of collections suits your institution.

I am an author and my book appears on the site: how does Bloomsbury Collections affect me?

You should have received a communication from us regarding inclusion on the platform. If you did not, or you have any queries, please contact bloomsburycollections@bloomsbury.com. Please let your librarian know your work is available on Bloomsbury Collections.

Does Bloomsbury Collections conform to accessibility standards?

Yes: the site has been tested for conformance level AA of the World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), including testing for screen readers and a colour contrast test.

Are Marc Records available for Bloomsbury Collections?

Yes: MARC records are provided at no additional cost, both for collections which your library has purchased, and for the freely accessible Bloomsbury Open Content. These are full AACR2-compliant records in MARC21 format, and they include Library of Congress Subject Headings, book summaries, related ISBNs and DOI-based persistent URL links. If required, we can also supply OCLC numbers corresponding to each MARC record. To request MARC records, please use the Contact Us form.

Does Bloomsbury Collections support federated search and other forms of automated query?

Yes, the site provides a service using the SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL) standard, which allows the retrieval of basic search queries using a standard URL syntax. Results are returned in XML using the Dublin Core schema. For further details, please read our SRU technical support document.

Can I see usage statistics for my institution?

Yes, if you log onto the administration portal via the Subscriber Services page. There are three COUNTER 4 reports available from Bloomsbury Collections: PR1, which lists total searches, result clicks and record views per month; BR2, which lists 'successful section requests' (i.e. views of full text chapters) by month and book title; and BR3, which lists unsuccessful section requests (i.e. where access is denied to content) by month and book title.

How do I contruct a WAYFless URL?

WAYFless URLs are links that libraries can create to allow their users to directly access a content item using federated authentication (e.g. Shibboleth) credentials without having to detour through the Bloomsbury Collections institutional login page. "WAYF" stands for "Where Are You From" and indicates the institutional login page selection list that a user would otherwise have to select from in order to identify their institution.
To construct a WAYFless URL, connect these pieces:
https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/start-session?entityId=
{the institution's registered entityID}
&target=
{destination page on Bloomsbury Collections}