Non-Affiliate Access to UC Davis Library Collections
Consistent with our mission as the library of a public research university, we welcome the public to visit Shields Library on the main campus in Davis. Anyone physically present at our libraries is able to use many of our digital resources from library workstations and, of course, access our collections in the stacks. All visitors are expected to respect library policies at all times in order to maintain library privileges.
Access to Archives and Special Collections
Non-affiliates are welcome to perform research using our Archives and Special Collections. Please note that access to Archives and Special Collections is available during Reading Room hours, may require advance notice, and is subject to the terms of our Archives and Special Collections Reading Room and access policies.
Access to Document Delivery Service (DDS)
Non-affiliates may request copies of UC Davis-owned articles or book chapters using the library’s fee-based Document Delivery Service (DDS). Learn more about DDS and register for the service.
Off-site Access
Unfortunately, we are unable to provide off-site (remote) access to non-affiliated users. Our licenses and subscription agreements with publishers legally restrict remote access to the faculty, researchers and students in the UC Davis community.
Our Support for Open Access
We appreciate that many members of the general public, staff of government agencies, and private sector employees are frustrated to find that they lack access to the digital books and scholarly journal articles they need. While our off-site access policy limits how we can provide support in these instances, the UC Davis Library is committed to reducing barriers to the accessibility of scholarship by advancing open access publishing and practices, which make scholarship freely available online to the public.
At the University of California, we have an open access policy requiring faculty to share their articles on eScholarship, our open access repository. (If the work you are looking for has a UC author, you might check to see if it is available there.) At the library, we support our researchers with publishing in open access journals that are freely accessible online, and we encourage publishers to explore ways to make their journals openly accessible. Together with other research libraries, we hope to expand these efforts and make published research freely available to the public at large.
How You Can Support Access to Scholarship
With continually escalating subscription costs and corresponding reductions in access to published research (even for UC Davis affiliates), we believe that supporting open access alternatives is the best way, in the long term, to ensure that everyone can access the information they need. In the meantime, we encourage everyone to help us advocate for improved access to scholarship. Here are some steps you can take:
- For government agencies and businesses, when your employees publish in scholarly journals, encourage them to do so in open access outlets, or retain the rights necessary to make their work available openly online.
- Support efforts to require state and federally funded research to be made available on open access terms.
- Support funding for our state’s libraries, both in and outside of universities. If the California State Library were funded to subscribe to scholarly journals, every state researcher could have access.