Following a successful trial of the resources in 2022-23, we have added two additional modules to our SAGE Research Methods collection. Through the Library you now have access to a host of guidance, worked examples, teaching resources and practice materials from SAGE Research Methods, SAGE Research Methods Video, SAGE Research Methods Datasets and SAGE Research Methods Data Visualisation.
Datasets
SAGE Research Methods Datasets is a collection of hundreds of teaching datasets and instructional guides that give you the chance to learn data analysis through hands-on practice.
This new resource is a bank of topical, practice datasets, indexed by method and data type. For academic staff, the datasets have been optimised for use in your teaching and can be used for in person teaching or within Canvas materials. This will save you the time of sourcing and cleaning data for use by you and your students.
The decisions researchers make when analysing data can be a mystery to students embarking on research for the first time. Through practicing analysis using real data from SAGE Research Methods Datasets, you can see how analytic decisions are made, helping you become confident researchers.
Quantitative datasets are taken from surveys and experiments and come with instructions to analyze the data in SPSS or R.
Qualitative datasets are taken from academic research projects, providing bite-size examples from interviews, focus groups, documentary sources, and more, plus advice on how to approach analysis.
SAGE Research Methods Data Visualisation will help all researchers, from beginners to more advanced practitioners develop the fundamentals of data and design necessary to create impactful visualisations. Through a series of practical video tutorials, text guides and practice datasets, the resources will help you identify the chart types that best fit your specific data story.
Researchers increasingly grapple with complex or big data and need to present their data in an understandable, easy to interpret, and informative way to disseminate their research successfully. Mastering the skills and techniques of data visualisation is, therefore, key for any researcher. This new resource will help you and your students to communicate data with impact so that audiences can grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns and relationships easily.
You are able to search and browse by data and chart type to find how to guides and explainer videos, explore a directory of data visualisation software and access datasets to help you practice communicating data.
During the summer months we have acquired access to a range of electronic resources for the SAgE Faculty to help support teaching and research activity. All of these great resources are available from Library Search. Here is a snapshot of some of the other new and updated collections.
E-book collections
We have invested in updates to our perpetual access e-book collections from a range of society, professional and academic publishers. Individual e-book titles will be returned in a basic search by author, title or keyword. Collections include:
We also have collections activated in Library Search for evidence based acquisition (EBA). This approach enables access to a lot of academic content to which we wouldn’t normally be available to us. Through EBA, publishers open up their e-book collections on receipt of a deposit paid by the Library for a 12 month period. Once the access period is up, we select the most used titles up to the value of the deposit to form a collection of perpetual access e‐books.
The EBA collections of most relevance for SAgE for 2023-4 include:
We have acquired access to two additional modules within the SAGE Research Methods platform to complement the existing book and video resources.
Datasets
Students and researchers exploring new statistical techniques often find that hands-on practice is essential to the learning process. Master new methods with sample datasets before applying them to your own data. The datasets included in SAGE Research Methods Datasetsare taken from government sources and academic research and demonstrate both qualitative and quantitative methods. Each dataset is presented with an easy-to-follow, step-by-step guide to best demonstrate how the method is applied.
Data visualisation
SAGE Research Methods Data Visualisation will help all researchers, from beginners to more advanced practitioners develop the fundamentals of data and design necessary to create impactful visualisations. Through a series of practical video tutorials, text guides and practice datasets, the resources will help you identify the chart types that best fit your specific data story.
During February we have trial access to Access Engineering, a new resource from McGraw-Hill. Access Engineering is an online reference tool that provides access to authoritative and regularly updated engineering information, including an online library of electronic books with leading titles such as Perry’s Handbook for Chemical Engineers and Marks’ Standard Handbook for Mechanical Engineers.
But the Access Engineering database is much more than an e-book collection. Throughout the trial period you will be able to explore:
Books
Search and read the latest editions of renowned engineering handbooks, reference, and upper-level textbooks. Filter to specific book components including figures, tables, graphs, and example problems.
Instructional Videos
The resource has over 900 instructional videos created by engineering lecturers that show step-by-step solutions to example problems.
Graphs and Tables
The interactive graphs and downloadable tables help you visualise and analyse data, letting you pinpoint values on a graph or input specific values for the variables. You can also download data from tables into an Excel spreadsheet for further data manipulation.
Spreadsheet Calculators
The Excel spreadsheet calculators contain embedded data and formulas to streamline complex calculations.
Case Studies
Case Studies are designed to be used in case method teaching, presenting real-world examples of engineering applications along with questions and problems.
Our free trial will run from 6 February – 8 March 2023. If you’re on campus you can access the database by searching for Access Engineering in Library Search.
To help us evaluate it, please email us your feedback, or leave a reply on this blog.
This small, but beautifully formed Standards Resource Guide will give you all you need to know about what standards you can access whilst at Newcastle University.
Standards are codes of best practice containing technical specifications and guidelines. They are used to ensure uniformity and consistency, reliability and safety and provide a quality benchmark.
We have full text access to all current BS, ASTM and IEEE standards.
Many ISO and EN (and some IEC) standards also have BS equivalents and are available online too.
To support teaching and research, we also purchase a small number of individual standards from other organisations (e.g. ASME, API, etc). These are usually available in hard-copy and you can find their shelfmarks on Library Search.
If you need a particular standard for your research, dissertation, or to support your teaching, please contact the Liaison Team or ask us to investigate buying it for library stock.
In the past few weeks you have probably been presented with module handbooks for everything you’re studying, with a list of references to things you are being told to read. Sometimes these will all be in the same referencing style and formatted in a way that you can understand easily what type of information it is. But sometimes, it might be more tricky to work out what exactly it is you are looking for. You can find yourself searching for a journal article, only to discover that it’s a book chapter, and you’ll never find it in a journal database.
If you are feeling a bit confused by your reading list, don’t worry. It’s a common problem and decoding references does get easier as you become more familiar with the referencing conventions of your subject.
There are some easy things to look out for in your references that will help you identify what type of information it is, and the key details, such as the author and title, that you would need to use in order to find it successfully. Take a look at the examples in the gallery to see what to watch out for.
Your reading list is also linked from your module course on Canvas. Individual items on your reading list will link through to Library Search, showing you print book availability and linking to e-book and e-journal full text wherever possible. This means you wont need to do a separate search.
New to the University and not sure where to start? Or simply need a handy list for you to refer back to when you’re studying Geography? Well look no further than this post! Here are some of our suggestions to help you find the information you need.
Whether you’re on or off campus, you can access the full collection of ebooks, electronic journals and professional magazines, newspapers, conferences and more, from Library Search.
Watch our short video showing how to search for eBooks.
To find academic journal articles from across our collection that match your topic keywords, use the everything search option and filter your results on the left to peer-reviewed journals.
Find out how to search for electronic journal articles in this short video.
You can contact the Liaison Team for one-to-one support or send your questions to Library Help, where there are staff logged into our live chat service, 24/7.
Between Library Search and your Subject Guide, you will be able to find excellent information to use in your academic essays, but there are many other resources you may want to try.
3. Proquest Collections
The Social Sciences Premium Collection and Natural Sciences Collection are both brilliant places to start if you would like to refine your results to either natural or social sciences, while still searching broadly across different information types. They are collections of databases, covering a range of information types including articles, reports, conference papers and theses, so you are able to find results that match your keywords from a variety of global sources.
Find out more about the Social Sciences Premium Collection, how to search it successfully and use the advanced features in the video guide below. It is a brilliant resource for sociology and excellent to use for any academic assignment.
Watch our introduction to the Social Sciences Premium Collection to explore basic and advanced searching.
Scopus is a large, multidisciplinary database, which indexes peer- reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings and trade publications.
One of the main advantages of using Scopus is that it provides a lot of useful information about the articles it indexes. This includes full reference lists for articles and cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research.
You can also set up citation alerts so you can be informed of new, relevant material automatically. Other useful tools include citation overviews, author and affiliation searching, visual analysis of search results, a journal analyser, and author identifier tools (if you are interested in publishing work).Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
https://youtu.be/qCu-obYMFsE
Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
Government publications provide information in a variety of subjects. Statistics, White Papers, Parliamentary Bills and a whole range of Official Legislation published by the Government. The provide a good, reliable, source of accurate statistics, and can give support to your argument in essay topics.
OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and gives you access to books, analyticalreports and statistics, covering a broad range of topics relevant for studies in sociology.
Statista is an extensive statistics platform covering over 1.5 million data sets. It includes reports, statistics and forecasts on a range of topics. So if you want to know compare homelessness statistics, explore education trends, attitudes to sustainability and the environment or how many people drink barista coffee every day, Statista is a brilliant place to start.
Statistics and reports can be exported in a range of formats including images and PowerPoint, giving you flexibility to include the visuals in your assignments. The statistics source is included, giving you the information that you need to cite it successfully.
Find out more about Statista with this brief introduction.
Newspapers are an excellent resource to explore, to provide a range of perspectives on a topic. You can find opinion pieces, social commentary and identify trends in public opinion.
We have a huge range of newspaper archives, historic newspapers and international sources such as Nexis that can mostly be access online and off campus. Our Newspapers resource guide collates all of our resources and will guide you through how where to look.
LexisLibrary is an excellent place to start. It provides access to UK national and regional newspapers, from the 1990s to today. It includes the copy text without the images or formatting and all of the details you need to create a citation are on the article page.
Once you have followed the Library Search link to access Lexis, make sure you click on News at the top of the page for full text access to all UK publications.
As so many articles are published every day, you will need to refine your searching using date ranges, combined keywords or by selecting specific newspapers or publication type (i.e. broadsheet or tabloid).
Remember to use your critical skills when using newspapers however, and watch out for Fake News. They are biased sources and are best used in balance with other sources. You can find our tips on our Evaluating Information skills guide.
11. Box of Broadcasts
Box of Broadcasts can be used to access TV and radio broadcasts from over 65 channels, including most of the UK’s freeview network, all BBC TV and radio content from 2007, and several foreign language channels. It’s a great resource to use to find documentaries or critical opinions.
You can view archived programmes, record new ones, create clips and playlists and see transcripts to help with citation and translation. You can also search for other user’s public playlists to help you in your own search.
Unfortunately, Box of Broadcasts is not available outside the UK.
The British Geological Survey website gives you access to geological datasets, including environmental monitoring data, digital databases, physical collections (borehole core, rocks, minerals and fossils), records and archives.
You can search using keywords or browse the Open Geoscience datasets. It is also worth browsing in the research section and participate in one of their citizen science projects.
GreenFILE is a fully searchable database on the EBSCOHost platform, offering research on all aspects of human impact on the environment. It includes peer-reviewed, academic articles, government and general-interest titles on topics including global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
Some of the content is full text while with others, you will need to use the Find at Newcastle University option to check for access via Library Search.
New to the University or just wanting a handy list of places to search for Sociology information. Then here are some of our suggestions to help you find the information you need.
Whether you are on or off campus you can access the full collection of ebooks, electronic journals and professional magazines, newspapers, conferences and more, from Library Search.
Watch our short video showing how to search for eBooks.
To find academic journal articles from across our collection that match your topic keywords, use the everything search option and filter your results on the left to peer-reviewed journals.
Find out how to search for electronic journal articles in this short video.
You can contact the Liaison Team for one-to-one support or send your questions to Library Help, where there are staff logged into our live chat service, 24/7.
Between Library Search and your Subject Guide, you will be able to find excellent information to use in your academic essays, but there are many other resources you may want to try.
The Social Sciences Premium Collection is a brilliant place to start if you would like to refine your results to sociology and the social sciences, while still searching broadly across different information types. It is a collection of social sciences databases, covering a range of information types including articles, reports, conference papers and theses, so you are able to find results that match your keywords from a variety of global sources.
Find out more about the Social Sciences Premium Collection, how to search it successfully and use the advanced features in the video guide below. It is a brilliant resource for sociology and excellent to use for any academic assignment.
Watch our introduction to the Social Sciences Premium Collection to explore basic and advanced searching.
Scopus is a large, multidisciplinary database, which indexes peer- reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings and trade publications.
One of the main advantages of using Scopus is that it provides a lot of useful information about the articles it indexes. This includes full reference lists for articles and cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research.
You can also set up citation alerts so you can be informed of new, relevant material automatically. Other useful tools include citation overviews, author and affiliation searching, visual analysis of search results, a journal analyser, and author identifier tools (if you are interested in publishing work).Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
https://youtu.be/qCu-obYMFsE
Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
Government publications provide information in a variety of subjects. Statistics, White Papers, Parliamentary Bills and a whole range of Official Legislation published by the Government. The provide a good, reliable, source of accurate statistics, and can give support to your argument in essay topics.
OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and gives you access to books, analyticalreports and statistics, covering a broad range of topics relevant for studies in sociology.
Statista is an extensive statistics platform covering over 1.5 million data sets. It includes reports, statistics and forecasts on a range of topics. So if you want to know which social media platforms are most popular across the globe, compare homelessness statistics, explore education trends or how many people read every day, Statista is a brilliant place to start.
Statistics and reports can be exported in a range of formats including images and PowerPoint, giving you flexibility to include the visuals in your assignments. The statistics source is included, giving you the information that you need to cite it successfully.
Find out more about Statista with this brief introduction.
Newspapers are an excellent resource to explore, to provide a range of perspectives on a topic. You can find opinion pieces, social commentary and identify trends in public opinion.
We have a huge range of newspaper archives, historic newspapers and international sources such as Nexis that can mostly be access online and off campus. Our Newspapers resource guide collates all of our resources and will guide you through how where to look.
LexisLibrary is an excellent place to start. It provides access to UK national and regional newspapers, from the 1990s to today. It includes the copy text without the images or formatting and all of the details you need to create a citation are on the article page.
Once you have followed the Library Search link to access Lexis, make sure you click on News at the top of the page for full text access to all UK publications.
As so many articles are published every day, you will need to refine your searching using date ranges, combined keywords or by selecting specific newspapers or publication type (i.e. broadsheet or tabloid).
Remember to use your critical skills when using newspapers however, and watch out for Fake News. They are biased sources and are best used in balance with other sources. You can find our tips on our Evaluating Information skills guide.
10. Box of Broadcasts
Box of Broadcasts can be used to access TV and radio broadcasts from over 65 channels, including most of the UK’s freeview network, all BBC TV and radio content from 2007, and several foreign language channels. It’s a great resource to use to find documentaries or critical opinions.
You can view archived programmes, record new ones, create clips and playlists and see transcripts to help with citation and translation. You can also search for other user’s public playlists to help you in your own search.
Unfortunately, Box of Broadcasts is not available outside the UK.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is a British social policy research and development charity, that funds UK-wide research and development programs. It aims to understand the root causes of social problems, and how social needs can be met in practice. The charity produces excellent topical research reports on cities towns and neighborhoods, housing, income and benefits, people, society and work.
The website is easy to search and browse by topic.
Written by the Social Science team at the British Library and guest contributors, it gives insight into their work, projects they are involved in as well as events, interesting resources and research methods related to the social sciences.
There is some great content on the blog and they run free, online short courses, with recent topics including things like propoganda and research methods for historical, society focused, research. This is definitely a blog worth bookmarking.
This a major resource for British social history from 1937-1967. It contains material generated by the Mass Observatihttps://libsearch.ncl.ac.uk/permalink/f/1jraif3/NCL_ALMA21112401630002411on social research organisation, including all the day surveys, diaries and subject directives from 1937-1967, a wide range of themed topic collections, together with other material such as images and essays.
The online exhibitions are an accessible way into the collections and highlight the wealth of information and documents available in the database.
To get started, browse by topic and you will quickly get a sense of the range of information that would be useful for your written assignments
As well as following your reading lists from your module leaders you will also need to find your own good quality resources. Here are some of our suggestions to help you find the information you need.
When working off campus, you can still access the full collection of ebooks, electronic journals and professional magazines, newspapers, conferences and more, from Library Search.
Additional ebook titles are being added to the collection every day while we are all working remotely. Search by author, title or keyword to find books to help you with your essay topic.
Our video will get you started with searching for eBooks.
To find academic journal articles from across our collection that match your topic keywords, use the everything search option and filter your results on the left to peer-reviewed journals.
Find out how to search for journal articles in this short video.
The Social Sciences Premium Collection is a brilliant place to start if you would like to refine your results to education and the social sciences, while still searching broadly across different information types. Find out more about the Social Sciences Premium Collection, how to search it successfully and use the advanced features in the video guide below. It is a brilliant resource for education.
You can contact the Liaison Team for one-to-one support or send your questions to Library Help, where there are staff logged into our live chat service, 24/7.
Between Library Search and your Subject Guide, you will be able to find excellent information to use in your academic essays, but there are many other resources you may want to try.
ERIC is the most widely used education database, that covers a broad spectrum of education literature including journal articles, books, conference papers and reports. It has global coverage although can be a little skewed towards American education.
It includes basic and advanced search options, and has a built in thesaurus that allows you to select subject headings for your search, that take into account the differences in how education levels or topics may be described internationally, e.g. elementary education versus primary education.
Find out how to do a basic search on the EBSCOhost platform, that hosts ERIC.
If you want to refine your search to UK education, use British Education Index instead. It is on the same platform as ERIC so is searched in the same way, but will refine your results to a British focus.
4. JSTOR
JSTOR is a full-text collection, giving you online access to scholarly journals, books and book chapters in the arts, humanities, and social sciences.
It has basic and advanced search options that allow you to search by topic keyword, author, subject area, title or publisher
Scopus is a large, multidisciplinary database, which indexes peer- reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, conference proceedings and trade publications.
One of the main advantages of using Scopus is that it provides a lot of useful information about the articles it indexes. This includes full reference lists for articles and cited reference searching, so you can navigate forward and backward through the literature to uncover all the information relevant to your research.
You can also set up citation alerts so you can be informed of new, relevant material automatically. Other useful tools include citation overviews, author and affiliation searching, visual analysis of search results, a journal analyser, and author identifier tools (if you are interested in publishing work).Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
https://youtu.be/qCu-obYMFsE
Watch this video from Scopus about how to expand your search from a known article reference.
Government publications provide information in a variety of subjects. Statistics, White Papers, Parliamentary Bills and a whole range of Official Legislation published by the Government. The provide a good, reliable, source of accurate statistics, and can give support to your argument in essay topics. This includes OFSTED reports, Department for Education advice, policy and publications.
OECD iLibrary is the online library of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and gives you access to books, analyticalreports and statistics, covering a broad range of topics relevant for studies in education.
OECD iLibrary is certainly worth searching to provide reputable supporting information for your academic work.
Statista is an extensive statistics platform covering over 1.5 million data sets. It includes reports, statistics and forecasts on a range of topics. So if you want to know which social media platforms are most popular across the globe, compare homelessness statistics, explore education trends or how many people read every day, Statista is a brilliant place to start.
Statistics and reports can be exported in a range of formats including images and PowerPoint, giving you flexibility to include the visuals in your assignments. The statistics source is included, giving you the information that you need to cite it successfully.
Find out more about Statista with this brief introduction.
Newspapers are an excellent resource to explore, to provide a range of perspectives on a topic. You can find opinion pieces, social commentary and identify trends in public opinion.
We have a huge range of newspaper archives, historic newspapers and international sources such as Nexis that can mostly be access online and off campus. Our Newspapers resource guide collates all of our resources and will guide you through how where to look.
LexisLibrary is an excellent place to start, including TES and The Guardian education. It provides access to UK national and regional newspapers, from the 1990s to today. It includes the copy text without the images or formatting and all of the details you need to create a citation are on the article page.
Once you have followed the Library Search link to access Lexis, make sure you click on News at the top of the page for full text access to all UK publications.
As so many articles are published every day, you will need to refine your searching using date ranges, combined keywords or by selecting specific newspapers or publication type (i.e. broadsheet or tabloid).
Remember to use your critical skills when using newspapers however, and watch out for Fake News. They are biased sources and are best used in balance with other sources. You can find our tips on our Evaluating Information skills guide.
Box of Broadcasts can be used to access TV and radio broadcasts from over 65 channels, including most of the UK’s freeview network, all BBC TV and radio content from 2007, and several foreign language channels. It’s a great resource to use to find documentaries or critical opinions.
You can view archived programmes, record new ones, create clips and playlists and see transcripts to help with citation and translation. You can also search for other user’s public playlists to help you in your own search.
You can get help at anytime during your studies by contacting your Social Science Liaison Team; Karen and Louise who are based in the Philip Robinson Library.
