Uncategorised – Library Subject Support

All New Student Texts Collection (STC)

The Student Texts Collection

The Student Texts Collection (otherwise known as the STC) is located on level 2 of the Philip Robinson Library…just to the right of the Library Help Desk, as you come in the main entrance:

What is in STC:

- Essential items on reading lists, not available electronically
- Items meeting a flurry of high demand (sometimes items are transferred to STC on a temporary basis with the agreement of the Liaison Librarian)
- Items that are rare, out of print or expensive (arranged with the agreement of the Liaison Librarian)

If an item meets the criteria above, there should be one copy in the STC for you to consult or borrow (if not, contact your Liaison Librarian).

Loan Periods:

Student Texts Collection (STC) items are usually issued for 4 hours, and you can borrow a maximum of 3 items at any one time. If the item has already been booked (see below re booking STC) then it might be issued for less than 4 hours – always check the receipt!

At the Philip Robinson Library, STC items can be borrowed until the following morning

Term Time Monday – Friday after 6pm
Term Time Saturday – Sunday after 4pm
Vacation times may vary

At the weekends Walton STC overnight loans start at 5pm. Walton STC items cannot be booked.

Why book an item in the Student Texts Collection (Philip Robinson Library only)?

Booking an item (you can book 3 STC titles at a time) allows you to reserve it for a particular time, then you can borrow it for four hours (or overnight, see above).

To book an item in the STC login to Library Search and follow the Request link next to the item you are looking for (remember to sign in to Library Search first):

Overdue charges

There is an immediate overdue charge of £1 plus £1 per hour or part hour after that, the maximum overdue charge for an STC item is £15.00

Self-issue/return

Philip Robinson Library has a self-service unit in the STC so you can issue your own books (either STC or General loans).

Walton Library has a self-service unit in the STC room for the loan and return of STC items only.

Please remember to take the receipt from the machine which shows the date and time the book is due back. All STC books should be returned on the unit in the STC area (not on other self-issue/return units in the library).

Help on Student Texts Collection

Check out our FAQs on the STC or contact us via Library Help if you have any further question.

Trial: Bloomsbury Popular Music

The Library has trial access to Bloomsbury Popular Music until 31st December 2019. This wide-ranging resource comprises:

All volumes of the landmark reference work, Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World.
All 130 short books in the 33 1/3 series, focusing on significant LPs from a wide range of genres and eras.
A selection of other scholarly ebooks on popular music published by Bloomsbury, including biographies and historical overviews.
Interactive features, including a pop music timeline and map.
Biographies of hundreds of artists.

You can search or browse it in various ways, such as by artist, genre or location. Watch the short trailer for an overview. As always, your feedback will be very welcome: you can either email it, or leave a comment on this blogpost.

If you are off-campus, please login to RAS first of all, and then access Bloomsbury Popular Music from a browser within RAS.

Be wise – start thinking about your Reading Lists

Although it’s now the summer vacation, it is time for our academics to start thinking about the reading lists for 2019/20. So, what resources are you going to recommend to your students to support your teaching? How will you ensure the Library has what you need in stock?

Use the Library’s Reading Lists to create, manage and update your own lists online. Or, you can send your list as an attachment to your Library’s Reading List team using our submission form.

Why use this service? Well, your lists will help the Library to order the correct number of copies of the titles you want to recommend, to decide on the appropriate loan periods of those printed books and enable access to electronic resources for your students. CLA scans (digitised book chapters and articles) can easily be requested through Reading Lists too. There’s no need to email us or fill out a separate request form; simply tag the item on your list and leave it to us.

Benefits for you include:

Your book orders and scanning requests will be dealt with seamlessly by a dedicated team of Library Staff.
It is an effective and efficient way of getting your Reading Lists to your students via Blackboard, alongside your teaching materials.
You can add resources from Library Search, any database or while you’re browsing the Web (via the “Cite it” tool).
You will provide accessible information to your students about their required reading, with live links to Library Search, eBooks, full-text journal articles and book chapters.
You can organise the resources to suit your needs, e.g. by week, topic, lecture or seminar.
You can tag the items on your Reading Lists so your students can clearly see what is essential, recommended or background reading.
In tagging each item, the Library can ensure appropriate stock provision for your students based on module numbers.
You can notify the Library and your students of any changes you wish to make to your lists automatically.
Reading Lists can boost student engagement with your subject and you can see the access statistics for the items on your list, providing valuable insight on how the students are using the materials listed.

So, Reading Lists are a great way to let your students know what they need to read, and to keep the Library informed too; they are the wise choice.

You can find information about creating and managing your Reading Lists, and making resources available to your students here. And if you have any questions about this service, please do contact us at readinglists@ncl.ac.uk

Have a good summer!

Art of the Possible: academic skills resources

You’ll find links to the relevant Library resources below.

As time is limited, please feel free to explore as you wish!

A. Academic skills resources

We’d recommend exploring the finding-evaluating-managing guides at the top of the screen, but feel free to try out the other guides on this page as well.

The Library’s online learning resources focus mainly on information skills: for a wider range of academic skills content and support, visit the Academic Skills Kit.

B. Research skills resources

Aimed at UG/PGT students: please explore our dissertations/projects guide. Try the proposal planners and search planners: could you use them with your students?

Aimed at PGR students: please explore the new online format for our HSS8002 information and library skills module. We’ve created a dummy version of HSS8002 for today’s workshop. You should be able to access the dummy course directly via this link.

Browse the module content via the left hand menu, or, if you want to try out the information skills checker, choose I am studying this module for credit in Newcastle on the home page.

You can also read our LTDS case study about this project.

We Are Here All Summer!

The University libraries will be open throughout the Summer vacation, you a can find the opening hours for each library here. Please note that during self-service times, access to the building will be by Newcastle University Smartcard only.

However, there will be building work in progress during library opening times and there may be some noisy periods in some areas. Free disposable earplugs will be available at the Service Desk.

You will still find the Liaison team on levels 3 and 4 of the Philip Robinson Library – we will be the ones wearing hard hats!

You can come to us for Endnote support and 1-1 sessions. Please book an appointment via Library help.

If you have an urgent question, and we are not physically around you will find 24/7 support via our out-of-hours Live Chat Service provided by a co-operative of academic librarians from around the world.

We hope you have a lovely summer!

Dippy the Dinosaur and Climate Change Heroes

Dippy the Dinosaur Exhibition The Liaison team visited the wonderful Dippy the Dinosaur at the Great North Museum: Hancock this week.

First put on display over 100 years ago, Dippy is a cast of a Diplodocus dinosaur and measures a massive 21.3 metres long – he was an incredible sight to see!

Dippy, who belongs to the Natural History museum, is currently touring the country and will be in Newcastle for this special exhibition until Sunday 6 October 2019. You can find out more about Dippy and book tickets here.

Dippy the Dinosaur exhibition showing timeline

Alongside the brilliant Dippy, the exhibition at the Great North Museum also features a spectacular visual timeline that emphasises the significance of climate change. Beginning in the time of the dinosaurs and highlighting the climate change brought about by the meteor that killed the species, it continues up through the industrial revolution to the climate emergency of today.

The display spotlights academics and teams from Newcastle University who are researching important climate change related issues. You can find out more about the work of these researchers below:

Dippy’s ‘Climate Change Heroes’ Reading List:

Dippy the Dinosaur exhibition display showing research on climate change

Professor Mark Whittingham (Professor of Applied Ecology)

Franks, J.R., Emery, S.B., Whittingham, M.J. and McKenzie, A.J. (2016) ‘Farmer attitudes to cross-holding agri-environment schemes and their implications for Countryside Stewardship.’ International Journal of Agricultural Management, 5(4). pp.78-95

Dunn, J.C., Buchanan, G.M., Stein, R.W., Whittingham, M.J. and McGowan, P.J.K. (2016) ‘Optimising different types of biodiversity coverage of protected areas with a case study using Himalayan Galliformes.’ Biological Conservation, 196, pp. 22-30

Hiron, M., Part, T., Siriwardena, G.M. and Whittingham, M.J. (2018) ‘Species contributions to single biodiversity values under-estimate community contribution to a wider range of values to society.’ Scientific Reports, 8, pp.1-7

Find more of Professor Whittingham’s work via his Newcastle University’s ePrints page.

Dr Elizabeth Gibson (Reader in Energy Materials)

Summers, G.H. and Gibson, E.A. (2018) ‘Bay Annulated Indigo as a New Chromophore for p-type Dye-Sensitized Solar Cells.’ ChemPhotoChem, 2(6), pp.498-506

Summers, G.H., Lefebvre, J.F., Black, F.A., Davies, E.S., Gibson, E.A., Pullerits, T., Wood, C. and Zidek, K. (2016) ‘Design and characterisation of bodipy sensitizers for dye-sensitized NiO solar cells.’ Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 18(2), pp.1059-1070

ElMoll, H., Black, F.A., Wood, C.J., AlYasari, A., ReddyMarri, A., Sazanovich, I.V., Gibson, E.A. and Fielden, J. (2017) ‘Increasing p-type dye sensitised solar cell photovoltages using polyoxometalates.’ Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, 19, pp.18831-18835

Find more of Dr Gibson’s work via her Newcastle University’s ePrints page.

Dr Niki Rust (Research Associate)

Braczkowski, A., Holden, M., O’Bryan, C., Choi, C., Gan, X., Beesley, N., Gao, Y., Allan, J., Tyrrell, P., Stiles, D., Brehony, P., Meney, R., Brink, H., Takashina, N., Lin, M., Lin, H., Rust, N., Salmo, S., Watson, J., Kahumbu, P., Maron, M., Possingham, H. and Biggs, D. (2018) ‘Reach and messages of the world’s largest ivory burn.’ Conservation Biology, 32 (4), pp.765-773

Rust, N, and Kehoe, L. (2017) ‘A call for conservation scientists to empirically study the effects of human population policies on biodiversity loss.’ Journal of Population & Sustainability, 1(2), pp. 53-66

Rust, N. and Taylor, N. (2016) ‘Carnivores, Colonization, and Conflict: A Qualitative Case Study on the Intersectional Persecution of Predators and People in Namibia.’ Anthrozoos, 29 (4), pp. 653-667

Find more of Dr Rust’s work via her Newcastle University’s ePrints page.

Urban Observatory

Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory collects real-time urban data from across the Tyne and Wear area. With over 50 data types available, including air quality, traffic, sewage and noise levels, it provides the largest set of publicly available real time urban data in the UK.

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.

Spotlight on …. UbuWeb

Have you tried using UbuWeb yet? You’ll be surprised at the amount of ‘stuff’ in there!

First of all, what is UbuWeb? UbuWeb is a completely independent resource dedicated to all strains of the avant-garde, ethnopoetics, and outsider arts. It hosts a wide range of texts and audio-visual materials. A few examples include:

Conceptual Writing:

“Poetry expresses the emotional truth of the self. A craft honed by especially sensitive individuals, it puts metaphor and image in the service of song.” Read how Craig Douglas Dworkin continues his explanation of ‘The UbuWeb Anthology of Conceptual Writing’ and have a look at examples such as John Baldessari’s text “I will not make any more boring art”

Outsiders:

Here’s how the editors describe this section: “Formerly known as UbuWeb’s Found + Insane section, we’ve redesigned and renamed it Outsiders, reflecting broader cultural trends toward the legitimization of Outsider work, be it in the visual, musical, or literary arts. Beginning with the mainstreaming of Folk Art (now known as Outsider Art) and the work of Jean Dubuffet in the mid-twentieth century, and moving into the present with the recent well-received museum retrospectives of visionary art of the insane (Adolf Wolfli and Henry Darger), there appears to be an insatiable hunger for this raw and emotionally-charged work”

UbuWeb Contemporary:

Read about the works presented by over 100 (to date) contemporary practitioners including one of our own Fine Art graduates, http://www.ubu.com/contemp/copeland/index.html who’s also listed among UbuWeb’s Top Ten!

Podcasts:

Produced by the Poetry Foundation, listen to podcasts of, for example: interviews with artists; the sound of Fluxus; women of the Avante-garde; the malady of writing, to name but a few.

Why not give UbuWeb a try – you’ll be surprised at how much ‘stuff’ there is!

(You can get to UbuWeb from the Fine Art Subject Guide http://www.ubu.com/).

Learning and Teaching Conference: Library activities

You’ll find links to the relevant Library resources below.

As time is limited, your handout gives you suggestions as to which sections you may find it useful to explore, and what sort of feedback we’d welcome, but please feel free to explore as you wish!

A. Academic skills resources

B. Research skills resources

Aimed at UGs/PGTs: please explore our dissertations/projects guide.

Aimed at PGRs: please explore the new online format for our HSS8002 information and library skills module. We’ve created a dummy version of HSS8002 for today’s workshop. You should be able to access the dummy course directly via this link. If not, log in to Blackboard, click Courses, and then type HSS8002 in the search box. Now click on the link to HSS8002conference.

You can also read our LTDS case study about this project.

C. Reading lists online

D. Employability guide

Supporting our students over the Easter vacation

We are Still here during the Easter Vacation [29th March-29th April]

Your University libraries will be open throughout the Easter vacation (closing only on Sunday 21^st April). Our main change is the libraries will be open slightly shorter hours and will include self-service time. Please note that during self-service times, access to the building will be by Newcastle University Smartcard only. For more info on opening hours please see the link below:-

https://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/about/opening-hours/#robinson

We are still around and can help with 1-1 consultancies and Endnote support. Take a look at the topics below and see how we can help you during the vacation.

Live chat

If you have an urgent question, you will find 24/7 support via our out-of-hours Live Chat Service http://libhelp.ncl.ac.uk/ provided by a co-operative of academic librarians from around the world

Revision

Please remember to stay hydrated and take regular breaks

For exam and revision advice visit: https://internal.ncl.ac.uk/ask/exams-revision which has information to help you at this stressful time.

Library Help FAQs

Believe us, there is no such thing as a stupid question and you’ll probably find that your question has been asked many times before! Why not check the library FAQ to see we have already found the answer http://libhelp.ncl.ac.uk/

Visit your Subject Guide

Working on an assignment or revising, and unsure where to find the information you need? Visit your library for advice and quick links to specialist information resources for your subject. Want to know more?

Are you working on a Dissertation or Project?

Make sure you visit our brand new interactive guide:- https://libguides.ncl.ac.uk/dissertations

This provides you with advice on a wide range of relevant skills, such as finding, managing and evaluating information. It also directs you to the key information resources for your subject area.

It’s easy to navigate, with clear text and short videos throughout. We hope you find it helpful, and if you’ve got any feedback, please let us know.