Category: Resources

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Beyond the Library

Will you be working on a dissertation or project this summer or next year? Worried that the Library might not have access to the specialist books and other resources which you need? Wondering how you can find out about resources relating to your research topic which are held in other libraries?

Wonder no more! There are three main ways you can find and access books and other resources held elsewhere:

1. Search

You can search the catalogues of over 100 UK and Irish academic libraries, national libraries and other major research libraries via COPAC. For a more in-depth and up to date search, you can also search individual academic library catalogues online. Need to look further afield? Search library catalogues internationally via WorldCat.

2. Visit

We have more information about how you can visit other libraries, locally and nationally, here. The SCONUL Access Scheme enables students to use other academic libraries around the country, but you need to register online first (and be sure to check the access arrangements for any library you are planning to visit, as they may alter during the year).

3. Obtain

If we haven’t got the book you want, you can ask us to consider buying or borrowing it, via our Books on Time service. If you need a copy of a journal article to which we don’t have access, please apply via our inter library loan service.

Image by andreas160578 from Pixabay. 

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Shades of Grey [Literature]

Grey literature. Black Literature.

Did you even know they existed? Possibly not.

Depending upon your source, “black literature” can be defined as books and peer-reviewed published journals. This is the familiar material you will source and use through your University Library and its catalogue.

Grey literature is something else entirely. Grey literature is research or material that is not produced by commercial publishers. It may be wholly unpublished or published in a non-commercial form. Think along the lines of industry-related materials, academic publications, government publications and think tank papers.

GreyNet, the Grey Literature Network Service has more detailed information on this vital research resource.

Grey Literature can be unique and an important source of information. There is a range of grey literature you may need to consult to ensure your research is complete. Examples of these materials include:

  • Working papers
  • Conference proceedings
  • Theses and dissertations
  • Government and official publications, including Green and White Papers, Select Committee papers, legislation
  • Policy statements
  • Research reports
  • Newsletters
  • Fact sheets
  • Blogs
  • Transcripts
  • Pre-prints and post-prints of articles
  • Technical reports
  • Professional guidelines
  • Patents
  • Standards
  • Market research
  • Data, e.g. Census, economic data, statistics

Most databases, available via your Subject Guide, will allow you to limit your search by document type, including grey literature, which does improve accessibility to this type of material.

Other resources include:

  • Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

    Operated by Bielefeld University Library this search engine indexes open access academic literature. The Advanced Search option allows you to search for specific types of grey literature.
  • Box of Broadcasts

    Box of Broadcasts provides access to over two million programmes from over 65 TV and radio channels, including most of the UK’s freeview network, all BBC TV and radio content from 2007, and several foreign language channels. You can view archived programmes, record new ones, create clips and playlists and see transcripts. (This resource is not available outside the UK.)
  • Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA)

    The Institute of Education Digital Education (University of London) Resource Archive (DERA) is a digital archive of all documents published electronically by government and related bodies in the area of education.
  • Open Grey

    The System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe provides open access to over 700,000 bibliographical references.
  • Teachers TV from Education in Video

    Provides access to all 3,530 globally-acclaimed instructional videos produced in 2008 by the United Kingdom’s Department of Education to train and develop teachers’ skills through demonstrations and commentary by teachers, administrators, and other educational experts.
  • Newcastle University Theses and Dissertations Guide

    Newcastle University theses are available in the eTheses Repository. Other UK theses may be available via EThOS. There is not one single source for locating non-UK theses. The Guide will give you some starting points.
  • UK Legislation

    UK Legislation is freely available online but be aware there may be delays of up to 2 weeks before any updates appear. Use your subscribed databases available via the Law Subject Guide.

The list can go on…

Once you have located your grey literature, do question it using the CRAAP test – currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose. Consider what is publicly available versus a subscribed (or paid for) resource. It may be biased and you should include that assessment in your work.

And finally, don’t forget, not everything is available online!

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Love reading? Browse through BrowZine…

Not sure which journal article you’re looking for? Do it the ‘old school’ way and browse through your favourite journals using BrowZine without having to trek to the library or newsagents to flick through the magazines.

BrowZine is a publisher-neutral reading and discovery platform for eJournals. You can browse complete issues, set up a personal bookshelf of your favourite titles and receive notifications when new issues are released.

Library Search and browsing eJournals via BrowZine

You can do this on your PC via Library Search or perhaps you prefer using your smartphone? Access BrowZine via the University App or download the BrowZine App from the Apple Store or Play Store.

Access BrowZine via the Newcastle University App

Set up your personal account using your University email address and BrowZine will always recognise you as a member of Newcastle University and give you access to the full-text articles it contains.

BrowZine Subject Areas

BrowZine Arts and Humanities

Get browsing!

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Finding Architecture and Planning journals

How do you access your journals and magazines?  There are a number of options.

  1. If you know the title you can do a keyword search in Library Search.
  2. Your subject guide is a ‘one stop shop’ for all resources and includes a tab to link to core journals,  journal collections and magazines such as those in Art and Architecture Archive and the Avery Index.  You can also view the list of print journals and magazines that we have in the Library.
  3. If you like to browse individual Architecture or Planning journals, then take a look at Browzine.

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Books added to the Library by students in SAPL (Semester One 2018/19)

We have a service called “Books on Time” for students. This allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Books on Time

In Semester one, academic year 2018/2019 we bought the following items after requests from students in SAPL.

There were 83 requests from 49 students totaling £4776.41 (22% of requests from undergraduates, 31% from Postgraduate taught and 47% from Postgraduate Research)

 

Title Now in stock
A City is Not a Tree 1xlong
A Greedy Man in a Hungry World 1xlong
A History of Great Yarmouth 1xlong
A Vision of a Living World: The Nature of Order, Book 3 1xlong
Architect in Practice 16xlong, 1xebook
Architecture and Capitalism : 1845 to the Present 1xlong, 1xebook
Architecture as a Craft : Architecture, Drawing, Model and Position 1xlong
Architecture as Experience: Radical Change in Spatial Practice 2xlong
Bananas Reconstructed: Architecture and Sacred Space 1xebook
Building Performance Analysis 1xlong
Century of Fishing: Fishing from Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft, 1899-1999 1xlong
China Development and Governance 1xebook
Cinemetrics : Architectural Drawing Today 1xlong
Cobe – Our Urban Living Room 1xlong
Colour Strategies in Architecture 1xlong
Computing the Environment: Digital Design Tools for Simulation and Visualisation of Sustainable Architecture 1xlong
Critical Companion to Tennessee Williams 1xlong
Culture and customs of Saudi Arabia 1xlong
Cycle Space, Architecture and Urban Design in the Age of the Bicycle 1xlong
Dreamscapes of Modernity: Sociotechnical Imaginaries and the Fabrication of Power 1xlong
Eat, Memory: Great Writers at the Table: A Collection of Essays from the New York Times 1xlong
Experimental Preservation 1xlong
Exploring the Use and Impact of Travel Guidebooks 1xlong
Fiction as Method 1xlong
Fish and Chips: A History 1xlong
Future Matters: Action, Knowledge, Ethics 1xlong
Governing Shale Gas: Development, Citizen Participation and Decision Making in the US, Canada, Australia and Europe 1xlong
Handbook on green infrastructure planning design and implementation 1xlong
Holloway Prison : An Inside Story 1xlong
Horse People: Thoroughbred Culture in Lexington and Newmarket 1xebook
Housing Design for an Increasing Older Population 1xebook
Imagined Futures in Science, Technology and Society 1xlong
In the nature of landscape 1xlong
Indispensable Eyesores: An Anthropology of Undesired Buildings 1xebook
Infrastructures in Practice 1xebook
Interrogating Ellie 1xlong
Introducing the Sociology of Food and Eating 1xlong
Invitation to the Life Course: Towards New Understandings of Later Life 1xlong
Lives in Time and Place: The Problems and Promises of Developmental Science. 1xlong
London’s Turning: Thames Gateway-Prospects and Legacy 1xlong
Making and Growing: Anthropological Studies of Organisms and Artefacts 1xlong
Manhattan Transcripts 1xlong
Marcel Breuer: a Memoir 1xlong
Maritime Norfolk: Part Two 1xlong
New Monte Rosa Hut SAC Self-Sufficient Building in High Alps 2xlong
Nonlinear Time Series Analysis 1xlong
North Norfolk Coast 1xlong
Original Rockers 1xlong
Otto Wagner: Die Wiener Stadtbahn 1xlong
Palaces for the People: How to Build a More Equal and United Society 1xlong
Placemaking with children and Youth Participatory Practices for Planning Sustainable Communities 1xlong
Planetary Gentrification 1xlong
Prosthesis 1xlong
Reconceptualising Agency and Childhood: New perspectives in Childhood Studies 1xebook
Relational Architectural Ecologies 2xlong
Rethinking Vienna 1900 3xlong, 1xebook
Revisiting Divisions of Labour 1xlong
Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring 1xlong
Robot Ethics 2.0: From Autonomous Cars to Artificial Intelligence 1xlong
Small Towns, Austere Times: The Dialects of Deracinated Localism 1xlong
Space and the Memories of Violence: Landscapes of Erasure, Disappearance and Exception 1xlong
The Architecture of Psychoanalysis: Space of Transition 1xlong
The Architectures of Childhood: Children, Modern Architecture and Reconstruction in Post-war England 1xebook
The Culture of AI: Everyday Life and the Digital Revolution 1xlong
The Design of Childhood: How the Material World Shapes Independent Kids 1xlong
The Ethics of Invention 1xlong
The Evocative Object World 1xlong, 1xebook
The Flak Towers in Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna 1940 – 1950 1xlong
The Great Museum 1xlong
The Luminous Ground: The Nature of Order, Book 4 1xlong
The New Black Middle Class in South Africa 1xlong
The Phenomenon of Life 1xlong
The Process of Creating Life: The Nature of Order, Book 2 1xlong
The Setting of the Pearl: Vienna under Hitler 1xlong
The Structure of Light : Richard Kelly and the Illumination of Modern Architecture 1xlong
The Urban Design Reader 1xlong, 1xstc, 1xebook
The Works: Anatomy of a City 1xlong
Toward an Urban Ecology 1xlong
Urban Disaster Resilience: New Dimensions from International Practice in the Built Environment 1xebook
What Are Community Studies? 1xlong
What is the future? 1xlong
XML : Parliament 1xlong
Young people, Class and Place 1xlong

 

 

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Books added to the Library by students in ECLS (Semester One 2018/19)

We have a service called “Books on Time” for students. This allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Books on Time

In Semester one, academic year 2018/2019 we bought the following items after requests from students in ECLS.

There were 28 requests from 23 students totaling £2144.91 (4% of requests from undergraduates, 43% from Postgraduate taught and 53% from Postgraduate Research)

 

Title Now in stock
A Handbook for the Study of Mental Health: Social Contexts, Theories and Systems 1xlong
Acquisitions of Complex Arithmetic Skills 1xebook
Conducting Educational Design Research 1xlong
Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives 2xlong
Early Years Foundations: Critical Issues 1xlong
English as a Foreign Language in Saudi Arabia: New Insights into Teaching and Learning English 1xebook
English as a Foreign Language in Saudi Arabia: New Insights into Teaching and Learning English 1xlong
Everyday Arias: An Operatic Ethnography 1xebook
Handbook of Moral and Character Education 1xlong
Introducing Multimodality 2xlong
Life after Privatization 1xlong
Listening to Young Children: A Guide to Understanding and Using the Mosaic Approach 1xlong
Listening to Young Children: The Reader 1xlong
Mathematics Learning in Early Childhood 1xlong
Mindfulness-based treatment approaches 1xlong
Research and Social Change : A Relational Constructivist Approach 1xlong
Scouse: A Social and Cultural History 1xlong
Self-Efficacy Beliefs of Adolescents 1xlong
Stancetaking in Discourse 1xebook
Student Plagiarism in Higher Education: Reflections on Teaching Practice 1xlong
Student Voice Handbook: Bridging the Academic/Practitioner Divide 1xlong
Student Voice: The Instrument of Change 1xlong
Student-Centred Leadership 1xebook
The architecture of productive learning networks 1xlong
The Cambridge Handbook of Linguistic Multi-Competence 1xlong
The Methodologies of Positivism and Marxism 1xlong
University Partnerships with the corporate sector: Faculty experiences with for-profit matriculation pathway programs 1xlong
Visible Learning: Feedback 1xlong

 

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GUEST POST: OSCOLA… Are you really getting the help you need?

Law ReportsLaura-Jayne Beattie, third year Law School student and Law Library Student Aide, has some top tips to help you find help with OSCOLA.

Need help with OSCOLA? Hate hearing this word? Then look no further than here and fear no more, as below I’ve summed up the best places for help with the bane of most Newcastle Law Student’s lives!

Listed below are resources available to help you master the OSCOLA referencing system. Some you may never have heard of, but all are there to ease you through the tricky issues you may face with referencing.

Law Library Staff

With super friendly staff available weekdays, and Stage 3 Student Aides on shift every evening and weekend, what more could you want? Please don’t feel afraid of coming to speak to us, we’re really not that scary (even though we may look it)!

Guides

The guides below are your first point-of-call (click on the links). However, there are sometimes particularly awkward sources. So, if the guides are confusing you or you can’t find the type of source you’re trying to reference within them, we’ll help you use them effectively to find what you need. Just show us what you’re wanting to reference, and we’ll try our very best to help you cite it right!

The Library’s guide on Managing Resources: OSCOLA: This is a good starting point for all things OSCOLA. Here you’ll find tips and links to guides and tutorials.

A-Z guide: A hidden gem of library resources, listing many types primary and secondary sources in alphabetical order. Each type is hyperlinked, and when you click on it a general overview of how to cite that source and a few examples appear.

OSCOLA (4th edition) resources full guide: A very detailed 55-page document, listing all types of sources (except for most international ones) and giving examples of how to cite sources throughout.

Quick Reference guide: An A4 document of how to cite the most common types of sources. A good document to print out and keep somewhere safe so you can always refer back to it!

OSCOLA 2006: Citing International Law guide: This is a separate guide, specifically for citing international law sources. From international treaties, to UN documents, it has it all!

Hopefully this has all helped in some way. But just remember if you’re struggling to cite something, don’t cite it wrongly or remove it from your essay and pretend it never existed! Get help from the super easy resources above!

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Where could maps take you?

Sniffer dog in high vis detecting a gas leak

So when does an Animal Science student need to use EDINA Digimap and GIS software?  The answer is not all do, but you never know where your dissertation project may take you, and what software may help your research or your presentation or visualisation of results.

Grace’s dissertation took her to Sunderland to road test the country’s first gas sniffer dog.  Collaborating with an Earth Science student to help her use the mapping products and with training from the geosciences team in using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) accurate to 2cm, she plotted the gas leaks and successful finds by her faithful four legged co-worker.  The team demonstrated that a dog’s nose is as good conventional gas detection equipment, and could be very helpful with difficult to trace gas leaks.

Sniffer dog in high vis finds gas leak
Sniffer dog, image used with permission from Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.
Digimap illustrating gas leaks detected
Map created by student using EDINA Digimap https://digimap.edina.ac.uk/ and used with permission by Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

With many thanks to Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, for providing this content.

See what is available to you on the Maps Guide and take up opportunities to collaborate or share good practice with other disciplines. You never know where it might lead!

Please note: EDINA Digimap requires registration before use.

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Government Publications: Questions in the House!

GOVERNMENT PUBLICATIONS

Surely all MPs are giving us the correct facts?

Take a look at our links to resources for Legislation, Statistics and Official Publications to make sure!

Government publications provide primary information in a variety of subjects. Statistics, White Papers, Parliamentary Bills and a whole range of Official Legislation.

These are a good reliable source of accurate statistics, and can give support to your argument in essay topics across all subjects.

Many government publications are now available online; our Library Guide highlights the useful websites.

Interested in Student Loans or the legal details of part time Employment Contracts?

Details of all UK legal processes can be found at the government website Gov.uk which provides lots of useful information about government services, with an A-Z of departments, agencies and local councils.

Meaningful Vote mean anything to you?

Keep up with the debate and Prime Ministers Questions at this website.

Follow the government shenanigans as it happens!

Democracy Live is the BBC’s new website which offers live and on demand video coverage of the UK’s national political institutions and the European Parliament.

Who stole 40 llbs of butter from Mr Wadsworths wagon in 1778?

You can find out here in The Proceedings of Old Bailey which contains accounts of over 100,000 criminal trial held at London’s criminal court.

So, for more information about finding your way around all aspects of Government Publications please take a look at our helpful video.

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Managing your References: EndNote and OSCOLA

Recipe for referencing: Newcastle University Library

“Should I use EndNote as a way to manage my references?” is often a question we get asked. We wish that there was a simple answer to that question, but there isn’t! It all depends on how many references you have, how you like to work and if you are willing to make time to learn how to use EndNote properly. You see, while EndNote is tool that can make your academic life easier (for example, it can help you build a collection of references, insert references into your work and create bibliographies), it will only save you time, if you invest time NOW.

So if you’re using the OSCOLA referencing style and weighing up whether to use EndNote or not, then you might want to consider the following:

  • You need to have a good grasp of the OSCOLA fundamentals before you even start with EndNote. If you need a refresher on OSCOLA, then check out the OSCOLA referencing guide first before even looking at EndNote.
  • EndNote will not do EVERYTHING for you. You will still need to manually input and amend your references to ensure your footnotes and bibliography comply with OSCOLA.
  • Have you got the time to invest in EndNote before using it? We strongly recommend that you make a start using EndNote from the beginning, rather than in the middle or at the end, of your research.
  • How do you want to use EndNote? Some people decide to use it simply as a storage place for their references and PDFs and leave it at that. Others use it both as a storage place, as well as a tool to help them cite.

Still not sure? Watch the video below to see how to use OSCOLA style and the Cite While You Write feature in Word. Then take a look at the OSCOLA and EndNote guide and see if it’s something you’d like to start using.

Any questions? Have a look at our Frequently Asked Questions to see if it’s been asked before. If not, then do get in touch via Library Help.