In our previous blog we explored how looking for information in the right place can help save you time and effort. However, sometimes, the right place to look can depend on what type of information you’re looking for.
While you’re probably familiar with books and you may have been introduced to journal articles, these are just two of the types of academic information available to you. Depending on your research question or essay title you might also find it useful to explore, for example, conference proceedings, maps, company information or newspapers.
Each type of information has its particular use; books provide an in-depth overview of a topic; journal articles are more specialised and focus in-depth on a particular area of a topic, and newspapers give you a useful perspective on events. While Library Search can help you find a large range of information types, some types of information are only available in special databases or archives. Before you start your search, it’s therefore important that you decide what types of information you will need to complete your assignment most effectively. You can find out more about different information types on our Finding Information Guide and in the video below:
When you know which types of information you need for your assignment or project take a look at our Resource Guides, which provide useful links and guides to appropriate sources.
“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.
Referencing is the acknowledgement of the sources that you use in your work. You must reference all sources that you use in your assignments, projects or dissertations, and includes quotes, ideas, facts, images, videos, audio, websites, statistics, diagrams and data.
Over the next two weeks we will be producing a series of blogs focusing on how to reference successfully in your work. We will cover…
explain why referencing is important
advice on how to produce consistent and reliable referencing
help on how to manage your information to make your life easier and assignments less stressful
point you in the direction of where to find advice and help
So come in from the cold and warm up with some referencing help and keep your eyes peeled for our upcoming blogs.
When you’re looking for information to help you write your
essays, assignments or projects it can be tempting to turn to the source of
information you use every day – Google.
While Google can be useful in some ways (such as finding company
websites or journal author’s profiles), it wasn’t exclusively designed to help
you find good quality, academic information that is reliable and relevant. This means you’ll likely have to spend more
of your time wading through huge amounts of information and fact-checking
resources for accuracy.
Thankfully, Google isn’t your only option – there are a number of different places to look that have been created with the aim of providing you with the information that you need, such as your reading lists, Library Search, and key Subject Databases.
Take a look at this video to find out more about how these
sources can help you:
For more help on finding information, take a look at the Academic Skills Kit.
It provides unique access to the working notebooks, verse manuscripts and correspondence of William Wordsworth and his fellow writers, including Dorothy Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas De Quincey and Robert Southey. While also offering a fascinating insight into the wider social, political and natural environment that shaped much of Wordsworth’s work, through the addition of travel journals, legal and financial records, guidebooks and over 2500 pieces of fine art from the Wordsworth Trust. There’s even more to explore with secondary research materials, including essays, biographies, maps, and photographs of the Lake District.
You can choose to browse the database via the Documents and Visual Resources tabs on the menu or use basic / advanced searches to focus your results.
Documents
The Documents section allows you to browse materials by collection (e.g. Dove Cottage manuscripts, Maps, Wordsworth Library Letters) or by document type (e.g. prose manuscript, correspondence, diary) and sort items by date, document type or first line.
You can also run a Document Advanced Search, which allows you to look for keywords within collections, document types or in works by a particular author.
Item records contain clear, full colour, digital scans of the document, which you can view in detail online or download as a PDF. You’ll also find bibliographic details and notes with options to export the record to EndNote or RefWorks.
Visual Resources
Under Visual Resources you can browse the Art Gallery, Art Wall, Photograph Gallery, and Effects and Objects.
The Art Gallery showcases paintings, sketches and prints featuring portraits of Wordsworth and his family, alongside landscapes of the Lake District and other inspirational locations. The Art Wall provides an in-depth look at a small selection of these artworks with a short essay on their history and context.
The Photograph Gallery provides modern images of the Lake District specially commissioned for the database, while Effects and Objects offers photographs of the rooms and garden of Dove Cottage, and some of Wordsworth’s personal possessions.
You can also run a Visual Resources Advanced Search to focus your exploration.
Images are subject to copyright but may be used for educational purposes. Take a look at the FAQs in the help section for more details.
More to Explore
Beyond Documents and Visual Resources, you’ll also find a collection of historical maps alongside an interactive map of the Lake District that allows you to explore key areas in the region. Literary Lives provides brief biographies of the important literary figures of the English Romantic period and in Further Resources you’ll find a timeline of the period as well as a small selection of essays on the theme.
My Archive
You can choose to register for a free My Archive account within the database, which enables you to save searches and build your own library of documents and images. A useful way to keep track of your research and the resources you’ve found.
If you’d like to know more, the Page by Page guide in the Help tab provides detailed guidance on using advanced search features, viewing your search results, using images in teaching and research, and building your collection in My Archive.
We have online access to the International Encyclopedia of Human Geography. This reference collection gives you an authoritative and comprehensive source of information on the discipline of human geography and its constituent, and related, subject areas. The Encyclopedia includes over 1,000 detailed entries on philosophy and theory, key concepts, methods and practices, biographies of notable geographers, and geographical thought and praxis in different parts of the world.
This online copy of the Encyclopedia features extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy.
With the high volume of information available to you online when you begin your research, it can be difficult to know which of the sources you find to actually use in your assignments or essays. Ultimately, you’ll want to choose the information that is of good quality and that can help you to answer your research questions most effectively. This means you need to make some critical decisions about the information you have found. Even if the materials you find are from reliable sources, such as Library Search or a Subject Database like Scopus you’ll need to consider how the information you’ve found compares to other information and if it is suitable for your purposes.
To help you make effective critical decisions you’ll need to think about these key areas:
Currency – is the information up-to-date?
Relevance – does it help you answer your research question?
Authority – who wrote it? How qualified are the authors?
Accuracy – how did the authors of the information reach their conclusions? What evidence and data have they used?
Purpose – Why was it written?
The video below looks at these in more detail:
See the Academic Skills Kit for more advice on selecting suitable information for your assignments and for more on the ins and outs of critical thinking take a look at this great blog from the Writing Development Centre: Shopping Around for a Critical Opinion
Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts (LLBA) indexes and provides abstracts of journal articles, books, book chapters and dissertations on linguistics and language sciences including topics such as:
Anthropological linguistics
Applied linguistics
Descriptive linguistics
Discourse analysis
Language – pathological and normal
Learning disabilities
Nonverbal communication
Phonetics
Phonology
Psycholinguistics
It’s an excellent resource for those interested in the nature and use of language.
The database provides both basic and advanced search options and you can limit your results by information (source) type, publication date, subject, language and more. You can also limit to peer reviewed items only. While some full text items are available, LLBA item records generally provide only bibliographic information and an abstract, so look out for the ‘Find@Newcastle’ button in your results page, which will help you check for a full text copy of an item in Library Search.
LLBA has the advantage of including a specialised linguistics thesaurus, which you can use in advanced search to refine and focus your search. The thesaurus provides a searchable list of all the subject terms used in the database and highlights links between broader, narrower and related terms, helping you to select all of the keywords relevant to your topic.
ProQuest provide a helpful and detailed guide to LLBA which includes search tips for basic and advanced search as well as some sample searches you can work through to familiarise yourself with the database.
This small, but beautifully formed Standards Resource Guide will give you all you need to know about what standards you can access whilst at Newcastle University.
Standards are codes of best practice containing technical specifications and guidelines. They are used to ensure uniformity and consistency, reliability and safety and provide a quality benchmark.
We have full text access to all current BS, ASTM and IEEE standards.
Many ISO and EN (and some IEC) standards also have BS equivalents and are available online too.
To support teaching and research, we also purchase a small number of individual standards from other organisations (e.g. ASME, API, etc). These are usually available in hard-copy and you can find their shelfmarks on Library Search.
If you need a particular standard for your research, dissertation, or to support your teaching, please contact the Liaison Team or ask us to investigate buying it for library stock.
