We welcome visitors to both The Sir Michael Cobham Library at Talbot Campus and to Weston Library which is on the ground floor of Bournemouth Gateway Building at Lansdowne Campus. If you’re not a current BU student, staff member or existing external member of the library, please contact us in advance to arrange your visit.

We offer reference membership, which allows members of the public to use in the library our printed resources available on mySearch

We also offer various external membership schemes which allow registered members to borrow books.

We are unable to grant access to university computers or printers and photocopiers. Also please note that there is no access to our e-resources due to the terms of our licence agreements with suppliers.

However, if you wish to connect to the internet for other purposes, using your own device, free Wi-Fi access is available via a partnership with a third party supplier, The Cloud. This commercial wireless solution is only recommended for limited internet usage such as email and browsing. 

Alternatively, if you are from an educational institution which participates in eduroam, you can connect your laptop to the eduroam network from wireless access points at both campuses. More detail on wireless networks for visitors.

Please note that no animals may be brought into the libraries apart from registered assistance dogs.

Useful information

Membership types

We have a number of membership options for visitors who want to borrow books from our libraries.