To celebrate International Women’s Day 2022 Walton Library’s Medicine in Literature team have created a Box of Broadcasts watch list to showcase films with a female story at their centre. The selection contains tales about women and their relationships to health, medicine and science. From Frida to Gravity to Suffragette the collection looks at both fictional and non-fictional accounts of the strength it takes to navigate the world as a woman. We hope you enjoy watching!
We are also celebrating International Women’s Day in the Walton Library with a display highlighting the achievements of female graduates from the Faculty of Medical Sciences. These are shown alongside books written by, or about, women who are making an impact in the world of medicine and breaking the gender bias in the process.
Celebrating female graduates of the Faculty of Medical Sciences.
Box of Broadcasts is a TV and radio streaming database that can be accessed via Library Search (UK access only, Login required). Take a look at the list of films selected for International Women’s Day 2022 or browse all of our public playlists by searching ‘Medicine in Literature Newcastle University’.
Is there a book that you think should be on our shelves, or a film to add to a playlist? Is there a subject you think would make a good BoB playlist? Then get in touch.
October is Black History Month, with the theme Proud to be: “inviting black and brown people of all ages throughout the UK to share what they are proud to be.”
On the Library’s Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) guide, we’ve highlighted books and other resources from our collections which focus on black British people and themes across many fields, such as politics, law, music, art, business and literature.
Please take a look, and if you would like to suggest books which you think we should add to our collection, we’d love to hear from you: just fill in our suggestion form.
Don’t forget to explore the other sections of our EDI guide too: it aims to curate and highlight information resources of all kinds, relating to different EDI themes. You’ll find books, films, social media, digital and physical archives and more. We’d love to get your recommendations for anything we’ve missed, and you can still catch up on our summer reading challenge if you’d like to be inspired, or inspire others.
You can read about Newcastle University’s events to mark Black History Monthhere.
And watch out for a really interesting Black History Month feature from our colleagues in Special Collections and Archives, coming up later this month….
The official blurb on EndNote is
that it is “…the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing
bibliographies, citations and references.”
EndNote takes a little getting used to and we recommend you familiarise yourself with it at the start of your research process. EndNote isn’t for everyone, but EndNote can save you a lot of time in terms organising and managing your references for assignments, dissertations or big research projects.
You can use EndNote to create and organise a personal library of resources relevant to your research. You can import references from Library Search, and a huge range of databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and Business Source Complete. Did you know you can instruct Google Scholar to import references into EndNote too? Give it a go.
You can also ask EndNote to locate full-text PDFs for references and annotate the documents within EndNote. Finally, if you already have PDFs stored in your home folder (H:\) then you can attach them to a manually-created reference within EndNote, bringing all your research together in one place.
In addition to organising your references (and this is the clever bit) you can then get EndNote to ‘talk’ to Microsoft Word, and insert the citations into your work for you in your chosen referencing style, e.g. Harvard at Newcastle, Vancouver, APA or MLA. If you don’t want to do that, then EndNote will also allow you to create an independent bibliography of your references, saving you an awful lot of typing.
Take a look at our EndNote Guide which contains all the introductory information you need, step-by-step workbooks to train yourself on the use of EndNote (the Desktop and Online versions), videos, and useful FAQs.
Finally, Newcastle University provides support for EndNote but it is not compulsory to use. Take some time to explore alternative referencing management tools such as Mendeley, Zotero, RefWorks which might suit you better.
For further training, you might want to have a look at Clarivate’s training calendar. They also have really useful Question and Answer sessions where you can ask them anything regarding EndNote. You can register for any of the training via their training calendar.
They also have an excellent suite of training resources which includes video tutorials, self-guided learning, PDF reference guides, live training and online guides for:
Following on from our Be Connected: Referencing session, this blog post covers the main points that we covered in our session. You will find links to key resources that we highlighted so you have them in one handy place.
You can also find a copy of our slides and a link to other useful referencing/managing information blog posts at end of this post.
The Managing Information Guide and the slides from the session give you the context of why it is import to reference and why you should be managing your information. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information out there (and that’s before you start your dissertation/project!), so getting into good habits it essential not only academically, but also for your wellbeing.
Why is referencing important?
It acknowledges the ideas and contributions of others that you have drawn upon in your work, ensuring that you avoid plagiarism
It highlights the range of reading you’ve done for your assignment and makes your own contribution clear, showing how you’ve taken ideas from others and built upon them
It enables the person reading your work to follow up on your references so they can learn more about the ideas you’ve discussed in your work or check any facts and figures.
How does referencing work?
Academic Skill Kit video on Managing Information; how to reference
Are there any tools that can help?
There are lots of referencing tools that can help you manage and format your citations and references correctly. Given where you might be within your dissertation or project it might not be best use of your time to start learning a new tool now. But if you are working with lots of references or still writing up most of your dissertation then a digital tool might save you some time in the long run.
A very useful online tool that lists all the information you need to include in a reference and provides examples of how a reference will look as an in-text citation and in a reference list.
Citation Buttons
Keep an eye out for this symbol on Library Search and Google Scholar. Clicking the button will provide the option for you to copy a reference in a particular style and paste it directly into your reference list. You might need to tidy it up a little bit but it will save you time over writing them manually.
Reference building tools help you to create a bibliography using the correct referencing style. You can input information manually or use import functions to pull information through from other webpages or documents. As with the citation button above, reference building tools can save you time but you may still need to check the references are accurate.
Reference Management Software: e.g. EndNote
If you are writing a detailed essay, dissertation or thesis, you may like to use a reference management tool such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero to help keep all of your references organised. This software allows you to manually add references or import them from Library Search, Google Scholar or Subject Databases; sort references into groups; attach pdf documents or add notes. You can then use the reference management software while you write to add in-text citations and format your reference list.
The University has a subscription for EndNote which is available in all University clusters and can be downloaded to your own personal device. You’ll find information about how to get started with EndNote on our EndNote Guide.
Remember: whatever tool you use, it’s always a good idea to get to know the conventions of the referencing style your school or lecturer would like you to use.
Need more help?
If you feel you need to work on your referencing a bit more, and still a bit unsure about it all, we recommend that you complete Cite them Right’s Referencing and Plagiarism tutorial – this is available within Cite them Right. You’ll need to log in then select the tutorial button on the top right of the homepage.
Following on from our Be Connected: finding and using market research for your research session, this blog post covers the main points that we covered in our session.
Where to find market research
Market Research Resource Guide
Our Market Research guide draws together the resources that we have at Newcastle University for finding key market research information. Visit the Market Research guide to access our University subscriptions on and off campus.
Mintel
As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into UK-specific consumer markets every year. Each report that Mintel publishes provides a unique overview of a market’s dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy.
What type of information will I find in Mintel?
Mintel provides consumer market research reports covering different topics or sectors of the UK market. You’ll find market research data that analysts at Mintel have collated including trends, statistics, information on brands and companies, demographic data on a range of sectors.
Which countries does Mintel cover?
Mintel covers UK only. For international marketing data, you’ll need to access another information resource we have called Passport which is provide by a company called Euromonitor.
What does our Mintel subscription at Newcastle cover?
We do not subscribe to all the reports on Mintel, currently we have access to:
Automotive
Beauty and personal care
Clothing and footwear
Drink
Food
Health and Wellbeing
Home retailing
Household care
Media
Retail
Technology
Library Horizons contains issues associated with marketing such as green lifestyles, Christmas shopping, consumers and the economic outlook. We also have some one off reports which we’ve purchased e.g. European Retail Handbook. So we currently have access to around 200 reports.
Recently Mintel has been providing ongoing insight and analysis across a range of industries to help you understand how and why consumer sentiment and behaviour are changing during the pandemic.
To find these resources, you need to go to Mintel (via Library Search) and there’s tab dedicated to Covid-19 analysis:
With over 200 results, there’s plenty to help any research project looking at consumer behaviour during this time.
Passport
One of the major resources we have for students, researchers and staff within the Business School is Passport. This is particularly good if you’re looking for information on Market Research which can be anything from consumer preferences and buying habits, companies and their products and market share.
What does our Passport subscription at Newcastle cover?
We subscribe to research data strands that cover industries, economies, business landscape and finance. Market research data that analysts at Euromonitor have collated including consumer lifestyle reports, future demographics, country profiles, updates on consumer and industry trends, company information, market sizes and economic indicators. Passport covers more than 200 countries and regions, with a global outlook.
The company who provide Passport, Euromonitor have a great YouTube channel where they upload short videos which covers information on sectors, trends and hot topics. These are created by data analysts who work closely with that sector and collate the data which feature in the reports and charts.
We think this is great way to quickly identify developing markets, flourishing segments and areas for predicted growth and trends. So if you have been asked to pick or research a growth area or identify a gap in the market to launch a new and viable product you might to browse through their channel.
If you click to display by videos and ensure you’ve got them displayed by newest first you’ll see some trends videos so for 2021 so you’ll get a good idea of consumer trends, top cities to watch, industry and economic trends.
Euromonitor have also curated their videos under a section on their channel called playlists So if you’ve been asked to look at a specific market you might want to browse through playlists and see what videos they have.
They are short, snappy and give you enough insight which might spark an idea or help you decide on a product or market.
Statista
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.
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).
Business Source Complete – MarketLine Reports
MarketLine Reports provide detailed analysis for companies, industries, and countries. These reports can be found within Business Source Complete and contain:
Industry: Includes Porter’s Five Forces, trend drivers, and outlook.
Country: Based on PESTLE analysis, cover a wide range of issues.
Company: Includes company performance and SWOT analysis
Where else to look?
The University subscribes to a number of business news sources, including online access to the Financial Times and The Economist. Visit the Business News Resource Guide to find out how to access the University Library subscriptions for free, including downloading the Financial Times app.
The Business School also provide alternative resources to find market research, which you can access via the Business Subject Guide.
Don’t forget to check out our Market Research Resource Guide and the Business Subject Guide for additional help and resources.
If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact you Business Library team via Library Help.
As part of the University’s Be Connected week, we ran a webinar focusing on newspapers and audio-visual resources, highlighting the benefits of using these fantastic resources and how to get the most out of our databases.
If you missed out on the webinar – fear not! We’ve put together a handy summary of key resources and take-aways for you to explore. Presentation slides from the webinar can also be found at the end of the blog.
Why are newspapers and audio-visual resources useful?
Well, these resources can be an invaluable source of information as they offer different perspectives on events or topics, by offering commentary and opinions and art (via adverts or cartoons) that reflect the social, political and cultural attitudes of a particular place and time.
They’re a fascinating alternative to the more authoritative voice of journal articles and books – and while they obviously come with a range of bias and inevitable fake news, this presents unique opportunities for analysis and discussion.
Can’t I just use Google to find out about the news?
The main benefits of using Library resources over Google is access – while some newspapers, such as the Guardian, allow you to read their articles for free, most do not or if they do, you’ll find the page covered in annoying adverts and pop-ups. With our resources it’s simple to access, download and save articles or images from a wide range of newspaper sources.
Our databases also have tailored advanced search and filter options that help you to narrow down your search and find exactly what you need. Google does have some basic date filters and you can use the advanced search to limit to a particular source and document type but it’s not as simple or intuitive.
However, accessing newspaper websites via Google does offer the option of browsing through the day’s news articles, and provides the associated pictures and photographs, which are lacking in some of our databases.
Where can I find the Library’s newspaper archives?
The Library provides access to a wide range of UK and international newspapers from the 17th century to the present day, mainly in online format. You can access and find information about all these resources on our Newspapers Guide.
As a starting point, we’d recommend trying Lexis for current news and Gale Primary Sources for historic news archives. Both of these resources allow you to search a wide range of sources at once and both have great search tools!
You can watch the video guides below to learn how to use these databases:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikfQPYSrMWo
Are there any other useful resources related to news and the media?
For TV and radio news programmes, you might like to take a look at Box of Broadcasts, which provides access to broadcasts from over 65 channels dating from 2007.
If you’re more interested in media commentary and analysis, the Film and Television Index provides coverage on film and television theory, writing, production, cinematography, technical aspects, and reviews, while Statista offers insights and data on the newspaper and television industries.
To find out more about this subject of news resources and getting the best out of them, check out the slides from this Be connected: using newspapers and audio-visual resources webinar.
As a student, it can be difficult to decide which databases or web sites you might want to use for your research and it will be dependent on the question you are trying to answer.
Company information resources can help you compare companies across industries, financial or employee criteria and research individual companies of interest. Depending how much detail you are looking for, you can access short profiles that give you an overview of individual companies or build detailed reports for companies that fit your criteria, including full balance sheets, income statements, ratios and more.
Where to find company information
Company Information Resource Guide
Our Company Information guide draws together the resources that we have at Newcastle University for finding company profiles, financial data and executive information. Visit the Company Information guide to access our University subscriptions on and off campus.
Business Source Complete
Business Source Complete is a full text business database that covers management, economics, finance, accounting, international business. It has full text access for nearly 3,600 scholarly, business related journals. It also includes trade publications, industry profiles, company profiles and SWOT analysis.
Company Information can be found in a basic search across all of Business Source Complete. You can either search by a company name or BSC will suggest companies that are linked to your topic keywords.
Alternatively, you can search within the Company Information section by company name.
What else can you find in BSC?
Company Profiles
The Company Profiles section found under the more menu gives you access to a full profile report for thousands of companies. Search by the company name. It includes detailed company information for more than 1.1 million of the world’s largest public and private companies.Information includes financials, subsidiaries, products, employees, industry information and more.
Company Profiles are drawn from a number of different sources including:
Marketline: A business information company covering the automotive, consumer, energy, financial services, healthcare and technology sectors. Used to called Datamonitor.
Medtrack Company Profiles: A biopharmaceutical corporate intelligence company.
Industry Profiles
Nearly 10,000 Industry Profiles that are updated annually. These are full text and can come from a variety of different providers including Marketline.
Nexis
Nexis is a major full text database for global news and business information.
Access to over 35,000 sources, with more than 12,000 international news sources including UK daily and regional newspapers, and company information for over 200 million companies worldwide.
In Nexis you can :
find newspaper articles and trade journal articles on a business related topic
gather information about a company, industry, country and people
keep up to date on a topic of interest
Company and financial reports
180 company databases from around the world
Coverage of over 200 million companies worldwide (public and private)
Over 20 million US companies included (public and private)
In-depth company profiles
Company snapshots
Financial analysis and competitor information
Industry and Country Reports
Daily industry-led news
Comprehensive monthly/quarterly reports
Industry & country driven reports including SWOT, forecastings, market trends and analysis
Multi-national sector directories broken down by key industry verticals
Companies Search
Use the Companies tab to look up factual data on a company. For example name of executives, ages, bonuses, salaries, description of the company, history of how they were funded and competitors.
For advanced use of Nexis, select the Power Search. This allows you to be very specific about the keywords you enter, where you would like them to appear in the article and which publications you would like to search.
Bureau van Dijk databases
At Newcastle University we subscribe to three products which provide access to company accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management information.
This resource covers standardised annual accounts (for up to 10 years), consolidated and unconsolidated, financial ratios, activities and ownership for over 7 million companies throughout Western and Eastern Europe, including Germany, France, Italy, Ukraine and Russian Federation. Company financials are in a standard format so you can compare companies across borders. Information includes Financial strength indicators, directors, images of reports and accounts for listed companies, stock prices and detailed corporate structures
This resource covers accounts, ratios, activities, ownership and management for around 80,000 very large companies across the Asia-Pacific region, including China, Singapore, Hong Kong and India. information includes company financials, financial strength indicators, directors and contacts, original filings/ images, detailed corporate structures, market research and economic country profiles and outlooks, business and company- related news and M&A deals and rumours
Operating Revenue >= 100 million EUR (130 million USD)
Total assets >= 200 million EUR (260 million USD)
Employees >= 1,000
Where else to look?
The University subscribes to a number of business news sources, including online access to the Financial Time and the Economist. Visit the Business News Resource Guide to find out how to access the University Library subscriptions for free, including downloading the Financial Times app.
The Business School also provide alternative resources to find company information, which you can access via the Business Subject Guide.
Don’t forget to check out our Company Information Resource Guide and the Business Subject Guide for additional help and resources.
If you have any questions about any of these resources, please contact you Business Library team via Library Help.
Join us for a summer of connecting and learning with our two-week programme of online supportive sessions for Be Connected (w/c 14th June 2021), and end your academic year (or start your summer!) on a positive note.
Throughout Be Connected weeks the Library, Academic Skills team, and Writing Development Centre are hosting a series of online live events that will help you enhance those all-important academic skills. We will also be highlighting our very best resources, so you’ll have a host of useful tools and advice at your fingertips.
A good place to start
Now is a great time to take a step back and assess your academic skills, review your deadlines, and organise your research. Join the Academic Skills Development team for an essential workshop on Time Management or sign up to a session to work on academic skills for your dissertation. The Library’s live session on ‘Getting the most from your search strategy’ will give you the tools to improve your search skills, particularly if you are undertaking a Systematic Review:
As you embark on your dissertation or research project there are many ways the Library, Academic Skills Development team and Writing Development Centre can advise and support you with your reading, notetaking, searching, and critical thinking. Our live Dissertation and Literature Review sessions are designed to help you at each stage of your research, whether you’re looking to plan your next steps, or add in finishing touches before submission. Also check out a fantastic session from our Special Collections and Archives team, which highlights how you can use our incredible collections for your research.
You might feel confident with your academic skills, but maybe some of those abilities could use a little bit of fine-tuning? Take time during Be Connected to hone your skills with the help of our live sessions. Referencing and referencing management can easily fall off your list of priorities, so to help you keep on top of all those citations and bibliographies the Library will be looking at common referencing problems and where to find help. Or you might like to investigate some of our subject specialist resources, such as newspapers, audio-visual, company information or market research:
During these two weeks the Academic Skills Development team want to hear from you at two focus groups to gather feedback on the redevelopment of the Academic Skills Kit website and to inform the creation of future resources:
Thanks to everyone who came along to our Referencing drop-in session. Here you can find links to the key resources we highlighted, so you have them all in one handy place, whether you were able to participate in the sessions or not. You can also find a copy of our slides and a link to other useful referencing/managing information blog posts at end of this post.
Our Managing Information Guide and the slides from the session give you the context of why it is import to reference and why you should be managing your information. It’s easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information out there (and that’s before you start your dissertation/project!), so getting into good habits it essential not only academically, but also for your wellbeing.
Why is referencing important?
It acknowledges the ideas and contributions of
others that you have drawn upon in your work, ensuring that you avoid
plagiarism
It highlights the range of reading you’ve done
for your assignment and makes your own contribution clear, showing how you’ve
taken ideas from others and built upon them
It enables the person reading your work to
follow up on your references so they can learn more about the ideas you’ve
discussed in your work or check any facts and figures.
How does referencing work?
Once you understand the why, you can get onto the nuts and bolts of referencing – the how:
Are there any tools that can help?
Yes! There are lots of referencing tools that can help you manage and format your citations and references correctly. Here are some examples:
A very useful online tool that lists all the information you need to include in a reference and provides examples of how a reference will look as an in-text citation and in a reference list. See our ‘Level Up Your Referencing: Cite Them Right’ blog for more information.
Citation Buttons
Keep an eye out for this symbol on Library
Search and Google Scholar. Clicking the
button will provide the option for you to copy a reference in a particular
style and paste it directly into your reference list. You might need to tidy it up a little bit but
it will save you time over writing them manually.
Reference building tools help you
to create a bibliography using the correct referencing style. You can input information manually or use
import functions to pull information through from other webpages or documents. As with the citation button above, reference
building tools can save you time but you may still need to check the references
are accurate.
Reference Management Software: e.g. EndNote
If you are writing a detailed essay, dissertation or thesis, you may like to use a reference management tool such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero to help keep all of your references organised. This software allows you to manually add references or import them from Library Search, Google Scholar or Subject Databases; sort references into groups; attach pdf documents or add notes. You can then use the reference management software while you write to add in-text citations and format your reference list.
The University has a subscription for EndNote which is available in all University clusters and can be downloaded to your own personal device. You’ll find information about how to get started with EndNote on our EndNote Guide.
Remember: whatever tool you use, it’s always a good idea to get to know the conventions of the referencing style your school or lecturer would like you to use.
Need more help?
If you feel you need to work on your referencing a bit more, and still a bit unsure about it all, we recommend that you complete Cite them Right’s Referencing and Plagiarism tutorial – You’ll need to log in then select the tutorial button on the top right of the homepage.
Slides
Here’s a copy of our slides from our referencing drop-in session:
Thanks to everyone who booked on our two Be Connected sessions to support your dissertation or project. We’re posting below links to the key resources we highlighted, so you’ve got them all handy in one place, whether you were able to participate in the sessions or not.
Getting a head start
If you’re at the early stages of planning your project or dissertation, or perhaps thinking ahead to next year, then you can get ahead of the game with our dissertation toolkit.
Search planner
This interactive toolkit includes a proposal planner, to help you refine your initial thinking as you develop your proposal, and a search planner, which takes you step-by-step through each stage of the process to create your own personalised literature search strategy. It will help you develop your search terms, identify different types of information resource, evaluate what you have found, and formulate a plan for keeping up to date and managing your references.
Our toolkit will help you translate vague thoughts into a firm plan of action!
Nearing completion: final checks
If you’re well into your dissertation or project, you may well have some last minute aspects you need to check.
Are you sure you haven’t missed any recent research in your area? Find out about 360 degree searching and make sure you check key resources for your subject area on your subject guide. Are there particular types of information missing from your search: for example: data, news, reports, images? Visit our resource guides for inspiration.
Resources guides
How is your bibliography shaping up: are all the references accurate and correctly formatted? Visit our managing information guide for all the answers, including a link to the Cite Them Right ebook for specific queries relating to a type of resource or referencing style.
Need more help?
You can book a one-to-one appointment with a member of the Library liaison team, and/or email us your draft search plan using our search planner.
Special Collections and Archives
Virtual Reading Room
Depending on your subject area, you might want to make use of some of the Library’s fabulous Special Collections and Archives in your research, or find out more about the possibilities of using archives elsewhere.
Start with the Special Collections home page: all the links you need for how to find and use our collections, including digital and virtual services while the Reading Room is still closed.
Need inspiration? Not sure where to start? Anxious about archives? Try the practical Special Collections guide for friendly, expert advice about using our collections in your research or finding collections elsewhere. Or why not see where your ideas take you with our great new Primary Sources Research Planner?
