Category: Arts and Humanities

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Journals – Don’t get lost in the darkness

Journals

The Library subscribes to a huge number of journals to assist you with your research. The majority of these are available electronically although we still have some print titles. There are some journals that are only published online with no print and may not have volumes and parts but are identified by DOIs or references numbers.

You can find journal titles by using Library Search. However if you are searching a database, you can use the Find@Newcastle University option, to link straight to Library Search to see if the journal is in stock. In Library Search records for electronic journals say Online access and when you click on them give you options to View Online.

Records for print journal give you a location and shelfmark indicating where the journal can be found.

If you read an article online then you need to reference the article as a Electronic Journal Article not a webpage.

Using the Harvard at Newcastle style a reference from an Online only Journal would look similar to this:

Chan, J.-Y. L., Wang, K.-H., Fang, C.-L. and Chen, W.-Y. (2014) ‘Fibrous papule of the face, similar to tuberous sclerosis complex-associated angiofibroma, shows activation of the mammalian target of rapamycin pathway: evidence for a novel therapeutic strategy?’, PloS one, 9(2), p. e89467.

A reference for a Print Journal would look like this:

Paton, N. (2015) ‘Night work triggers health risks’, Occupational Health, 67(9), pp. 6-6.

We also have a tool called Browzine which can help you identify journals in your subject area.

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GUEST POST – OFF THE SHELF

Off the Shelf poster

Hi! I’m Caitlin, a final year law student and law library aide – and by now I’m used to the stress of exams and deadlines.

I tried the ‘poetry-pick me up’ after going into the common room for a revision break.

I stumbled across Sue (@kind_curious) in the Law School Student Common Room, where she asked, ‘do you want a poem?’. Not really knowing what to expect, I had to overcome a bit of social awkwardness! I was surprised by Sue’s passion and love of poetry, which was clear in the way she spoke about how she’d used poetry in the NHS before and it was what she enjoyed most.

I was asked questions about my current stress levels and how I was feeling with exams, and how I dealt with stress. I told her that when I get stressed I talk even more than usual, which for anyone who knows me sounds like I’m going at a million miles an hour, and she suggested something that would relax me.

I laughed as I saw no signs of chocolate or Netflix – my usual go to relaxation strategies.

Instead she said I needed something like a lavender bubble bath – again I saw no sign of a bubble bath in the Law School and I’d yet to find one in the Dungeon.

She picked out two poems that would make me feel like the relaxing in lavender: she suggested ‘Sonnet’ by Elizabeth Bishop and Shennagh Pugh’s ‘What if This Road’.

What if this road reminded me of Robert Frost’s ‘A Road Not Taken’, and was great for me as a an indecisive person. It was matched perfectly to the questions that Sue had asked me, as I read it as a  ‘roll with it’ approach to life, which is definitely needed to cope with exams and deadline stress.

The second poem, Bishop’s ‘Sonnet’, had great visualisation techniques, almost like a meditative poem – which was spot on to turn off the stress and slow everything down!

The experience was a great switch off from deadline stress, and a great use of the 10 minutes which I’d usually scroll through twitter or Instagram. It was something different, and really quite unique and relaxing, which I would definitely recommend to help have a break from any exam and deadline stress!

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Westlaw platform upgrade

The legal database, Westlaw, has had an upgrade. The content remains the same, but you should notice significant improvements to the search and display options, and its overall look and feel.

How can I access it?

You can find links to the new Westlaw platforms on the Law subject guide and Library Search. There are separate links for Westlaw UK and Westlaw International.

What are the main features of the new platform?

You’ll find the main search headings (e.g. cases, legislation, journals, current awareness, books) are still there,  but arranged differently.

As before, you can still search or browse across all content types, or limit to a specific content type (e.g. cases or legislation). Specific search options (such as using connectors) are similar to the old system, but you should find everything more clearly set out.

You’ll also find a wider range of personalisation features, including favourites, and options to annotate and share content with others.

Other new features include a Legislation Compare tool, which makes it easier to track recent and future changes to legislation.

You can browse topics to find key documents (including cases and legislation), and track the latest and future developments via an interactive calendar.

Where can I find out more?

You can get more help via handy quick reference guides to the new platform, or videos. As a minimum, we’d recommend watching the short overview video  or the getting started guide, which take you through the key features, and give you useful tips. However, there are also helpful videos and guides on specific aspects, such as alerts, annotations, cases and legislation.

What do I need to do?

Please note, the old Westlaw platform will be switched off on 5th August 2019, so we would strongly encourage you to start using the new platform as soon as you can.

Personalisation features such as alerts and folders can’t be migrated to the new Westlaw platform. Therefore, if you have set up any of these on old Westlaw, you will need to set them up again on the new platform. You should find the new platform has much improved personalisation features.

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Everyday life and Mass Observation

Vintage documents

Mass Observation. Wow, sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? It should!

This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. You can log in using your Newcastle University Campus ID and password to explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, diaries, photographs and interactive features dating from 1937 to 1972.

If you’re interested in learning more about the topics currently influencing our lives, it would do no harm to research the social history topics available within Mass Observation such as anti-Semitism, the economy, austerity, education, women at work, religion, mining, news, the Government, smoking, drinking, sexual behaviour, propaganda, unemployment and writing (to name just a few!).

Mass Observation home page

Mass Observation Diarist maps

If you want to know more about Mass Observation and to see some samples from the collection, then you could take a look at the Mass Observation Twitter feed, or there is a recorded webinar available for you to watch via YouTube in order to get the best out of the resource.

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Resource in Focus Megatrends on Passport

Passport is a global market research database that gives us statistics, analysis and reports on global markets, economies and consumers. As well as being able to search for statistics and analysis using keywords, browse by country, industry and economy, Passport highlights what they call Megatrends which are the major issues influencing consumer behaviour in today’s market.

Megatrends for the UK right now include population changes, healthy and ethical living, and middle class retreat. You can access the full reports from the Passport homepage while they give useful summaries on their YouTube channel.

To access the Newcastle University subscription to Passport and our other market research resources, visit our Market Research resource guide.

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CNKI: New Year, new look!

tomoko-uji-633735-unsplash

Do you use CNKI and China Academic Journals? The resource has a new look for the New Year!

CNKI still offers access to journals, theses, proceedings, newspapers and yearbooks on a wide range of subjects – literature, history, philosophy, politics, military affairs, law, education & social sciences, electronic technology & information science, economics & management – but is now even easier to use.

CNKI homepage - new interface

Access CKNI from our Chinese and Japanese Studies Subject Guide. Once you have logged in, click on the New Homepage button (top left-hand corner of the screen) to go to the new interface which makes searching this vast resource easy.

CNKI link to new homepage

N.B. If you really do prefer the old version, you can still access this for 6 months (until the end of June 2019). Just click on ‘Old Version’ in the menu at the top of the screen.

CNKI link to old version of interface

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Lexis: Full Academic Library now available

We’re pleased to announce that we have recently upgraded our Lexis subscription to their Full Academic Library.

This provides access to an extensive range of new content (almost 500 new online sources), including practitioner textbooks and major works in many areas of law, such as finance, taxation, criminal, consumer, planning, housing, and family law.

The new content will be individually catalogued on Library Search soon, but for now, the best way to access it is via Lexis itself. You’ll find the new content in the relevant sections of Lexis (e.g. in Forms and Precedents, Commentary or My Bookshelf).

To browse or search a full list of Lexis content in all categories, click on Sources in the top right hand corner.

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Literature Online upgrade

The literary research database, Literature Online (LION) has had an exciting new upgrade.

LION, which enables you to research international literature of all genres in books and journals, together with 350,000 works of poetry, prose and drama from the 8th century to the present, is now hosted on Proquest’s main platform. It also has good coverage of related areas such as linguistics, philosophy, classics and film studies.

The new site includes the following improvements:

  • new content will be available more quickly
  • clearer search options to help you focus your search
  • improved author pages
  • you can now cross-search LION along with other Proquest databases, such as Early English Books Online, The Guardian/Observer/New York Times newspaper archives, plus thousands of journal articles in other subject areas.

Not quite ready to switch? The old LION platform will still be available until August 2019, but we would encourage you to try the new LION sooner rather than later!

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Resource in Focus: Statista

This is an extensive statistics platform covering over 1.5 million data sets (and adding an additional 500 each day) with revenue forecasts from 2015 to 2022 on over 400 industries.

Data is collected from over 22,500 sources covering over 75,000 different topics.

The platform can broken down into different elements including:

Statistics : where you can choose your industry e.g. Consumer goods, Retail & Trade.

Reports : This section is very comprehensive and you can select :

  • Dossiers which are a quick quantitative overview of a topic. These are in house reports which contain the most recent and relevant statistics concerning a single subject. You can export these in PowerPoint or PDF format.
  • Outlook Reports which are trend forecasts
  • Surveys which are market insights from an expert and consumer perspective
  • Toplists which are company ranking for sales and analysis
  • Market studies
  • Industry Reports which are perfect for highlighting key figures for a particular industry sector. These are updated annually and contain textual information as well as numerical data such as turnover and revenue.
  • Global Business Cities Reports which are ranking and key statistics on particular cities.
  • Brand reports contain insights into the brand itself
  • Country reports
  • Further studies which are more in-depth reports

Outlooks; these provide information on specific areas and help you identify the potential in those areas. This can include forecasts, detailed market insights and key performance indicators.

Statista online help video

This short video from Statista gives a nice overview of the different search functionalities.

Access via https://www.statista.com/ or via the record on Library Search.  (If you are accessing on campus, the platform will authenticate using IP address. If you are accessing off campus you will be taken through EzProxy so access should be seamless if you’ve logged in previously using your Campus ID and password).

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Spotlight on….. a-n: The Artist Information Company

a-n: The Artist Information Company provides alternative insights into the visual arts, with fast-paced news, comment, debate.  Here are the first (and there are so many more) 5 things you’ll love about this resource:

  • See the calendar of exhibitions, conferences and other arts related events for the coming year

  • Keep up to date with news of what’s going on in the art world        
  • Read interesting discussions with arts practitioners, curators and others involved in making and showing art #How was it for you..

  • Find out what pieces galleries around the world are acquiring

  • Join in and receive e-alerts, find out what bursaries and job opportunities are available, meet other a-n members, follow a-n on social media and generally get involved!  
  • Available to you via Library Search… go-on, you know you want to a-n!