Category: Databases

Posted on

Early English Books Online update

Early English Books Online (EEBO) has moved to an enhanced platform on Proquest.

The content remains the same, but you should note various improvements to the interface. Key changes include:

  • Additional search and filter options.
  • The new platform adapts fully to all devices, including phones and tablets.
  • Improved viewing of results, with larger thumbnails and images.
  • Text Creation Partnership transcriptions are now included.
  • Improved export and personalisation options.
  • You can now cross-search EEBO with other Proquest content, such as Early European Books.

You will still be able to access the old EEBO platform until the end of June 2020, but we would encourage you to familiarise yourselves with the new platform as soon as possible.

Find out more about the new platform, together with further enhancements planned for early 2020, on the Proquest EEBO site or for more detail, visit the EEBO lib guide.

Posted on

Resource in Focus: Henry Stewart Talks Business; Management Collection

HS Talks Logo
HS Talks Logo

HS Talks – The Business & Management Collection includes 1,200 online multi-media videos, online lectures, case studies and case study interviews by leading experts in academia, industry and commerce. Topics cover a whole range of business education including Finance, Accounting & Economics; Global Business Management; Management Leadership & Organizations; Marketing & Sales; Strategy; Technology & Operations.

The collection is categorised into 6 broad subject areas and further organised into 90 series, each overseen by an editor who is a key expert in the field. Speakers are chosen based on their expertise and each talk is produced together with the speaker especially for the collection. The collection is reviewed and updated monthly. Once you have selected a subject area or applied your keyword you might like to filter using some of the options such as length of video or date published.

Academics can also easily embed into the VLE for students to access. You can either do the whole video or sections. HS Talks provide a in-depth guide to take you through this step by step. 

There are different types of videos on HS Talks. These include :

  1. Traditional format lectures with high quality graphics: the lectures are primarily designed to deliver ‘information’. The lectures have multiple associated features including printable slide handouts and speed-up/slow down options.
  2. Extended form case studies: accounts of real world experience describing what was done, how, when and with what consequences.
  3. Bite-size case studies: these short descriptions of real world commercial activities come with suggested topics for consideration and discussion.
  4. Case Study Interviews: interviews with experts from commerce and industry, from start-up entrepreneurs to large corporation executives, confront the challenges they encounter. Each interview is accompanied by suggested topics for discussion and individual and group projects.

Some of the talks come with additional PowerPoints which can be download, along with transcripts of the interview. Viewers can also enable close captions.

There is a quick start guide available from HS

Posted on

Resource in Focus: Building Types Online

After positive feedback from a trial in 2018 we are delighted to announce we now have access to this database.

This platform is based on Birkhäuser’s architecture books, a selection of Birkhäuser manuals and additional analysis Annual updates which add new building types and more contemporary international case studies.

This resources features :

  • Over 6000 high quality architectural drawings/ building plans. These are mostly vector-based, drawn to scale and available for download.
  • 2500 photos of building types
  • 1200 case studies
  • Over 900 international projects
  • 160 thematic articles providing background information on specific aspects of individual building types e.g. lighting, acoustics, urban considerations, access types or planning processes.
  • Types of buildings include: housing, schools, libraries, office buildings, sacred buildings, hospitals, museums, industrial complexes, infrastructure, transport and other building types.

This makes it an excellent choice for both teaching, research and understanding the practice of architectural design.

Search options include :

  • Full Text
  • Architect
  • Building Types
  • Decade
  • Height
  • Country
  • Author
  • Urban Context

You can also browse by grant systematic access to all content according to Building Type, Urban Context and Morphological Type.

This is an important resource for anyone studying building typology or writing architectural design assignments. In nutshell a fantastic online resource covering building types in the last 30 years. 

The Search Help document from the resources explains the database’s functions in detail. An overview of the terminology used in the building analysis and the Search and Browse options is available as well.

To access the database, click on the link via Library Search.

Posted on

Thieme Science of Synthesis (SOS) trial

We have trial access to Thieme Science of Synthesis (SOS) from now until the end of the year.

Are you looking for critically-reviewed, synthetically-relevant and readily-applicable methods with detailed experimental procedures to support your research projects?

To start getting to the synthesis quicker, try Thieme Science of Synthesis (SOS), a full-text resource for evaluated methods in synthetic organic chemistry.

There is no need to login as you will be recognized automatically by IP address during the trial. However, you can register for a personal account by clicking on “MySoS” in order to save searches and results lists.

Click the “Training & Support” button in the top menu to find case studies, author lists and further help. There is a quick start guide and video tutorials to support you.

We would like to know how this resource supports your research, assessed work and teaching, so please send any comments to Julia Robinson, Faculty Liaison Librarian for chemistry.

Posted on

All change for Westlaw UK

Are you a returning Newcastle Law School student? Welcome back!

There have been some changes while you’ve been away (have you seen the Philip Robinson Library? No? Go take a look…!) but importantly for you, Westlaw UK has had a makeover.

Legal research is an essential element of your studies at Newcastle Law School so don’t be put off by the change.

[Source: https://youtu.be/au4byJp_-dc]

You can still browse for cases, legislation, journals (using the Legal Journals Index) and current awareness.

Selecting United States and International sources will launch a new browser window – just change your default Region from UK to US or International.

A screenshot of changing Region in Westlaw UK

See the Get Started guide for an overview.

Read Lucy’s post for more information on the changes: https://blogs.ncl.ac.uk/subject-support/2019/06/20/westlaw-platform-upgrade/.

If you have any questions about the interface, or want a refresher on how to use Westlaw, contact your Student Representative – Darby Okafor. He’ll be announcing details of his Eldon Cluster drop-in sessions for this semester soon via Facebook (@TRFLLNewcastleUniversity) but drop him a line if you need assistance before then: D.Okafor@ncl.ac.uk.

Posted on

Cambridge Histories Online: what’s new?

We subscribe to Cambridge Histories Online, the internationally renowned book series which first started in 1902.  We have access to over 360 volumes online, covering many different subject areas in depth, including history, music, language and literature.

We have recently bought access to several new volumes (in some cases, multiple volumes) which cover the following topics:

Ireland

Moral Philosophy

Intellectual History of Byzantium

Judaism

Communism

Modernism

Slavery

All the Cambridge Histories are individually catalogued and searchable via Library Search, or if you prefer, you can browse them all together on the Cambridge Histories platform.

 

 

Posted on

New resource in focus: Aerial and Lidar Digimap

Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, comprising various collections, including Ordnance Survey and Historic. We have recently acquired access to two more modules: Aerial and Lidar Digimap.

Aerial Digimap 

This provides access to some of the highest quality aerial photography available for Great Britain, created and licensed by Getmapping plc. You can use a range of interactive tools, allowing interrogation and analysis of the data online and offline. You can also:

  • add annotations (text, point, lines and areas)
  • identify image capture date by clicking on the map
  • generate PDF, PNG or JPG files for printing
  • save maps to go back to or print later

Lidar Digimap

This offers detailed Lidar data from the Environment Agency and presents a model of the earth’s surface.

Uses of Lidar data are highly varied, from use in the creation of visual effects for virtual reality and film projects, to archaeology, forestry management, flood and pollution modelling.

You’ll need to agree to the new licence before using these new modules: please see our separate blogpost for more details. If you need help with Digimap, there are extensive help pages online for each component.

Posted on

New resource in focus: Rock’s backpages

Rocks back pages logo

We’re looking in more depth at some of the great new online resources we’ve bought recently, to help you get the best out of them.

Rock’s Backpages is an online archive of music journalism, containing over 37,000 articles from the 1950s to the present, including reviews, interviews, letters and features, plus 500 audio interviews.

It covers a wide range of artists and genres: from Aaliyah to ZZ Top; from BB King to PP Arnold; from 10CC to 999; and from The Rezillos all the way to….. The Revillos. Hold tight!

Articles are taken from music publications around the world, such as NME, Rolling Stone, Smash Hits, The Face and Mojo, together with music articles from non-music magazines and newspapers. You can read the work of writers such as Lester Bangs, David Hepworth, Nick Kent, Jon Savage, Caitlin Moran and many more.

Hot tip! Choose Advanced search or Library for a full range of search/browse options, including by genre, artist, journalist or publication. If you want to read the first reviews of The Beatles, analyse how LGBT issues have been handled over the years, or explore Chrissie Hynde’s early years as an NME journalist, you can do it here.

New content is added to Rock’s Backpages every week, and highlighted on the home page. Follow them on Twitter to keep up to date, or listen to the weekly podcast which highlights the latest additions.

Posted on

To google or not to google?…That is the question

Can you remember life before Google?! It is such a huge part of our lives, that even those of us who can remember a time before it (hmmm, yes I am that old!), can’t imagine life without it now. It is great place to find the latest cinema listings or who won last night’s football match, but what about finding information for your latest assignment or research?

There is a time and a place to use Google, but you need to be aware of its limitations. Google, after all, is a business. It earns the majority of its money from advertising, and it will not reveal how it ranks its search results (every wonder how Wikipedia always appears at the top of every search you do?). A search that we do today and repeat tomorrow for a piece of research could give us hugely different results, with no explanation of why. We are also often bombarded with millions of search results and the reality of our searching habits mean that we rarely look beyond the first or second page.  Admittedly, advanced search features on Google and the use of Google Scholar can really help us to become a smarter and effective Google users, but is it enough for our own research? Are we finding everything that is out there?

We need to think about our information needs before we work out where it will be best for us to search. Imagine, for a moment, that we are want to buy a particular local cheese, which we love. Would we go to a general shop or would we go to a specialist deli? We are probably going to need to go to a deli. It is just the same when searching for information. Google may be great for some background information or a starting point of a project, but it may simply not give us the high quality, niche information that we need to give us top marks for an assignment. So what are the other options?

Aimee Cook, a Liaison Librarian here at Newcastle University, explains more.

So next time you think about googling something for an assignment, stop and check out Library Search and your subject guide first for the books, eBooks and specialist databases that are available to you. If you are going to use Google, make use of the advanced search features and get to grips with Google Scholar. Happy searching!

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash

Posted on

Doing your Literature Review

Struggling with your Literature Review?  Can’t see the wood for the trees?

We have lots of resources that can help you find the references you need:

  • Watch this video for an overview on literature reviews.
  • York University’s video on Creating a Search Strategy will introduce to the process of breaking down your research question.
  • Don’t forget as you go along you need to be managing your references so you can easily come back to them when you start writing.
  • EndNote  is a piece of software that will help you do this.
  • Remember you must give credit where it is due.  Don’t forget to Reference correctly!