Category: SAgE

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Resource in Focus: Construction Information Services (CIS)

Screenshot of CIS homepage

Overview

CIS is produced jointly with the National Building Specification (NBS) especially for architects, civil and structural engineers, building control officers, building services engineers and other professionals in the construction industry. CIS provides fundamental industry information and legislation, as well as additional sector material. The extensive range of full-text documents cover all aspects of the building, engineering, design and construction process in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland.

The Construction Information Service (CIS) is a comprehensive online collection of over 28,000 construction related standards, regulations, technical advice and articles from 500+ publishers. Content is updated weekly, neatly organised into topic based supplements and delivered through a function rich and easily accessible online portal.

This collection is an invaluable resource if you are studying:

  • Many of our Engineering courses
  • Architecture, Landscape and Planning
  • Geography

Subjects covered include:

  • Building regulations
  • Environmental/land Planning
  • Planning control
  • Urban planning
  • Waste/water management
  • Earthworks/foundations
  • Land drainage
  • Law/legislation
  • Transport facilities/planning
  • Tunnelling and underpinning
  • Engineering
  • Materials
  • Groundwater control
  • Roads
  • loads/stresses
  • …and much, much, much more!

Searching

Within the CIS search box you can enter your keywords or browse by subject in the left-hand menu. There is also an Advanced Search option. There is also plenty of help with how to use CIS under the Help option on the left-hand menu:

Screenshot of left-hand menu on CIS showing where to browse and where to get help with CIS.

Access

CIS is available through our catalogue, Library Search. If you are on campus no password is required. If you are off campus you will need to log in using your University campus ID and password. You can also find it under the Journals and Database tabs in our Subject Guides, and on our Standards Resource Guide.

Copyright

Every document in The Construction Information Service has copyright permission from the publisher. Some publishers do not allow use of their documents or will only give permission for certain titles. Publishers who do give permission can also place an embargo on certain documents, resulting in a delay between publication and inclusion in CIS.

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Digimap: Global and Society

Screen shot of Society Digimap.

Adding to our existing EDINA collection, we now have access to both Global and Society Digimap.

Society includes census and socio-economic data which can be layered across the map software to provide a picture and give an insight of society in a given area. For more information about how to use the Society data, watch this video from EDINA.

Whilst Global provides access to global datasets in cartographic styles and downloadable formats. It allows you to browse, annotate and print global maps and access to downloadable global datasets for use in GIS software.

To access these resources, click on the link to the Digimap collection via Library Search or our Maps Resources guide, log in with your university account and click on the Society or Global tab to access the data.  You will need to accept the license agreement the first time you use it.

Please explore and email us if you have any questions, or post it as a comment on this blog. For other map resources, check out our Maps Resources guide.

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Resource in Focus: Fortune Magazine archive

We have recently subscribed to Fortune Magazine Archive – an extensive cover-to-cover collection of the long-running business magazine dating from its very first issue in February 1930 through December 2000.

Subjects Covered in this magazine:

  • American business
  • International business
  • Economics
  • Industry
  • Technology

Published monthly by Time Inc., Fortune Magazine sought to provide news and analysis of both American and, later, international business, economics, technology, and industry.  Each issue featured vivid color illustrations and photographs, as well as high-quality feature articles, published at a time when most business magazines were merely black and white compendiums of statistics and figures. 

Articles and cover pages are fully indexed and advertisements are individually identified, ensuring researchers and readers can quickly and accurately locate the information they seek. Fortune Magazine Archive is valuable to researchers of 20th-Century current events, politics and culture, as well as those interested in the history of business, advertising, and popular culture.

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Get more out of JSTOR!

JSTOR is one of our most popular academic databases, and you may be one of the many people who uses it regularly. It provides access to thousands of journal titles, books and other resources.

We subscribe to many of its collections, giving us access to thousands of journal backruns, spanning many decades and subject areas, together with 6,500 Open Access books (all catalogued on Library Search), and over 1.3 million images, videos and audio files, via Artstor Public Collections.

STOP PRESS! We now have access to an additional 59,000 JSTOR ebooks. Read all about it!

But are you getting the best out of JSTOR? Read on to find some tips and features you might not know about…..

Advanced search

JSTOR is a very large, multidisciplinary database, so a simple keyword search won’t usually be the most effective way to search it. Click on Advanced Search to get more options which will give you better control over your search: for example, just searching in certain fields (e.g. author or abstract) or limiting your search by date, resource type, language or subject area.

Text analyser

This exciting new feature enables you to drag and drop a document, and JSTOR will then process your document’s text to find the most significant topics and recommend other documents within its database. Try it out!

Workspace

Using Workspace, you can save, organise, and share your sources, including non-JSTOR content. You can also add notes and generate citations in many popular formats. You need to create an account on JSTOR in order to use this feature.

Text mining

Data for Research (DfR) provides datasets of JSTOR content for use in research and teaching. Data available through the service include metadata, n-grams, and word counts for most articles and book chapters, and for all research reports and pamphlets. Datasets are produced at no cost to researchers, and may include data for up to 25,000 documents.

Further help

You can get more help with JSTOR by clicking on Support at any time, or visit their specialised library guides for a more in-depth focus on particular topics. For the very latest JSTOR developments, tips and features, follow @jstor on Twitter.

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Resource in Focus: Scopus

Have you ever found yourself asking any of the questions below?….

  • Where can I find relevant, high quality information for my research?
  • How can I track who has cited an article since it’s publication, as well as looking back on the references it used?
  • How can I follow an academics work?
  • Who can I collaborate with in my research?
  • Which journal should I submit my paper to?
  • Where can I find information to support my research funding application?

…..If you have, then why not take a look at Scopus and use it as your starting point? You can access it through Library Search or through your subject guide in the ‘Journals and Databases’ section.

Whatever subject you are studying, Scopus is one of the databases that you need to get to know. It is a large multi-disciplinary abstract and citation database of peer reviewed literature. It contains over 69 million records, including journal articles (from 22,000 titles), conference papers, books (20,000 new book details added every year) and book chapters. However, it doesn’t just have a list of results for you to wade through, but it has a series of smart tools which help you track and visualise the research as well. You can search for documents, sources, authors and institutions and compare and contrast them using a variety of different tools.

If you are wondering if Scopus is for you, then check out the video below. And if you are already a user of Scopus, then why not listen to one of their webinars to get the best out of the resource or check out the Scopus blog for tips and tricks. Happy exploring!

https://youtu.be/-VE3ADZvoUY
See Scopus basic search in action.
https://youtu.be/qCu-obYMFsE
Scopus is an excellent resource to use to help you expand your search by focusing on specific authors and cited reference searching.

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A little conversation with Mintel

As a globally recognised market analyst, Mintel produces hundreds of reports into UK-specific consumer markets every year. Each report provides a unique overview of a market’s dynamics and prospects, giving you the knowledge to devise informed and profitable marketing strategy. Mintel is also one of the many Business specialist databases that we subscribe to here at Newcastle University, which you can access via Library Search, or along with many other of our resources via our Business Subject Guide.

Mintel also produce an excellent podcast, A Little Conversation Podcast, on YouTube which covers ideas and new perspectives on how we eat, drink, shop, groom and think – from the key issues impacting society to trends in food, beauty, tech and retail, they discuss what consumers want and why.

So if you are looking for an alternative resource in market research, have a look at these podcasts. You can subscribe to their podcast via their website or where you normally download your podcasts.

Here’s their latest podcast which is looking consumer behaviour of upcoming holiday shopping:

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New Resource: Max Planck Encyclopedias of Public International Law

The Max Planck Encyclopedias of Public International Law (MPIL) is now available to Newcastle University staff and students, particularly to those with an interest in international law. This is the definitive reference work on this subject area with over 1,700 peer-reviewed articles, authored by over 900 leading scholars and practitioners, to support your research.

MPIL gives access to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) and the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law (MPEiPro) via Library Search or our Law Subject Guide using your Campus ID and password.

Once accessed, you can use the main menu to browse, select a subject area or locate an author who writes in your chosen field in the MPEPIL and MPEiPro. An overall search function, with basic and advanced searching, is also available.

An image of the MPIL homepage.

Oxford University Press will give you a quick guided tour of the resource [7:22 mins]:

If you have an interest in PIL, international environmental law, peace, Treaties, human rights, refugees, use of force, space law, international criminal law or the law of the sea then this resource will be useful to you.

Your search results are in full-text format with cross-referencing within MPEPIL and MPEiPro, including links to external websites or case law. Results can be printed in PDF format, saved, emailed and shared. You can also sign up for current awareness alerts in relation to specific articles.

An image of a result within MPEPIL.

You can also expand your research with the Oxford Law Citator, linking to related content in relation to your topic of interest. This is useful to use in conjunction with the Personal Profile function where you can register as an individual user and save any results you find.

If you have any feedback on this resource, please leave a comment on this post or email our Law Liaison Librarian.

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New Resource: OUP Law Trove

Update! Following trial access, we now have a subscription to this resource for 2020/21.

This Oxford University Press resource contains most of the essential, recommended and background reading titles you would normally find listed in your module handbooks and on the Law Library shelves. We have temporary access to OUP Law Trove to ensure our staff and students can study from home.

An image of the OUP Law Trove sign-in page.

You can access OUP Law Trove directly via Library Search (log in with your Campus ID and password).

You can search by author, title, keyword, or narrow your search to those titles available to us alone by selecting Show titles in my subscription (left-hand menu). As of July 2020, there are 210 books.

You can further narrow your results by refining by subject using the options available in the left-hand menu.

If you prefer, you can take a tour of the resource before diving in.

If you have any feedback on this resource, please leave a comment or contact libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk.

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Spotlight on World Scientific eBook Collections

selection of book jackets

World Scientific Publishing (WSP) is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals with headquarters in Singapore. WSP publishes about 500 books annually as well as more than 150 journals in various fields. World Scientific eBooks are electronic versions of World Scientific print titles. 

The titles span across a wide variety of subjects, including:

  • Asian studies
  • Business & Management
  • Chemistry
  • Computer Science
  • Economics & Finance
  • Engineering
  • Life sciences
  • Mathematics
  • Physics & Astronomy
  • Social Sciences

Once connected, you can search for titles within a specific subject:

Screen shot of subject search

Or for titles on a specific topic :

If you’re searching for titles directly through the World Scientific platform, look out for the “Full Access” symbol to make sure we have access to the full text content:

You can also search for individual titles on Library Search:

A user guide is available on the Library Subject Support guides and you can download from the link below:

World Scientific User manual April 2020Download
selection of book jackets