CNKI: New Year, new look!

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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

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.

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!

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).

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!

New resource in focus: Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (Romantics Poetry)

We have recently added a new module, Romantics Poetry, to our Oxford Scholarly Editions Online (OSEO) collection.

OSEO enables you to explore old works in new ways. It brings together authoritative editions of major works, so you can explore variations between editions, annotations and extensive notes side by side with the texts, or you can just read the texts on their own.

The new module means we now have access to 272 Oxford editions, containing 344 works, including poetry, prose, drama, essays and correspondence, in the following categories: Romantics Prose; Romantics Poetry; 18th Century Drama; 18th Century Prose.

You can browse by work, edition or author, or search in highly specific ways (e.g. just search within notes or stage directions) to pinpoint exactly what you want. The editions are individually catalogued on Library Search, but we’d recommend searching for works and editions via the OSEO interface itself.

Various export and personalisation options are available.

If you haven’t used OSEO before, we’d strongly recommend watching this introductory video, so you can understand the potential of this resource and how to use it.

Have you used Oxford Scholarly Editions Online? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

New resource in focus: Race Relations in America

Continuing our series of blogposts exploring our brand new humanities e-resources in more depth…

We have recently bought access to Race Relations in America. This is a collection of primary source material covering Civil Rights in the USA from 1943-1970.

This archive contains a huge range of primary sources. Before you dive in, we’d recommend clicking Introduction, in which you can learn more about its scope and features.

The sources come from the records of the Race Relations Department of the United Church Board for Homeland Ministries in New Orleans, and comprise many different types of material, including pamphlets, audio recordings, survey data, photographs and speeches. These sources are supplemented by secondary materials such as contextual essays, maps and thematic guides to give you ideas for interpreting and exploiting the archive.

You can browse or search the archive contents by clicking Documents (to browse) or one of the two search options. You can filter your search in various ways, e.g. by document type, year or theme. If you just want to view images or listen to audio, click the relevant buttons on the top menu.

Have you used Race Relations in America? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

New resource in focus: African American Communities

Continuing our series of blogposts exploring our brand new humanities e-resources in more depth…

We have recently bought access to African American Communities. Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and North Carolina, this collection presents multiple aspects of the African American community in the 19th and 20th centuries, through pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, photographs, correspondence, official records and oral histories.

This archive contains a huge range of primary sources. Before you dive in, we’d recommend clicking Introduction, in which you can learn more about its scope and features.

The primary sources include many different record types, including pamphlets, images (including 360 degree view), official records and oral histories. These sources are supplemented by contextual essays to give you ideas for interpreting and exploiting the archive.

You can browse or search the archive contents by clicking Documents (to browse) or one of the two search options. You can filter your search in various ways, e.g. by document type, year or theme. If you just want to view images, click Image Gallery.

Have you used African American Communities? Please feel free to post your comments and experiences by clicking Leave a comment below.

New resource: Westlaw All Books

We’re pleased to announce that following a successful recent trial, we have now bought access to Westlaw All Books.

This upgrade gives us access to an extra 250 law reference works online, covering over 50 areas of law, including 71 loose-leaf titles. No more worrying about whether the book is on the shelf or not: the information is always at your fingertips!

The new titles are likely to be of interest to students in business, accounting and finance, planning, and engineering, as well as law.

The new titles are individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can access them all by logging into Westlaw, and clicking on Books on the menu across the top of the page.


Thanks to everyone who used the trial and gave us feedback.