Chat Research Help: Cal Poly Pomona Public FAQs

Visitors are allowed to enter the building and go into the public areas of the library, which includes the open study areas.  See the links at the bottom for locations, hours and parking.  Most of our hard copy collections are on open shelves that you can look at and copy without requiring any sort of identification.  The campus WiFi system (which is available in the Library) has a "guest" logon that anyone can use.

You can access our OneSearch from home to see the hard copy resources we keep in the building.  If you come to electronic content that is intended for just our students and faculty, you will be blocked by a password screen from viewing the actual content. You would have to come into the Library and use the "Quick Look Up" computers to access this content.

These do not require a password to start up.  You can see the locations of the “Quick Look Up” computers on our floor maps (they are represented with a letter “Q”: look at the maps for the 2nd, 3^rd and 4^th floors: most of them are on the 2nd  floor). The computers can get very busy, so you may have to wait.  You can access most of our electronic content from the “Quick Look Up” computers.  This would be ebooks, electronic journals, electronic articles and databases.  Due to licensing requirements, some of these products require login with a campus password, so visitors cannot use them, no matter how they try to access them.

You can purchase a visitors card at the second floor Circulation/Reserve desk, which will allow you to check out books from the general circulating collection.  This card does not allow you to check out periodicals, DVDs, CDs, or reserve materials.  You also cannot use Document Delivery (Interlibrary Loan). The visitor’s card does not give you remote password access to our electronic resources: you will have to come into the library to use the “Quick Look Up” computers for those resources.

Printing and scanning: Guest printing and scanning are currently disabled.

Things you should consider bringing with you: Paper and pen or pencil for making notes (or electronic device for same). USB compatible storage device (flash drive) for storing work or downloaded items; or use a cloud storage provider (cloud storage will not work for microfilm or microfiche copying).

If you need help researching a topic, visit the 2nd floor Research Help Desk. For help with locating and checking out materials, or purchasing a visitors card, visit the Circulation Desk on the 2nd floor.