Library Search and your personal Library Account are never further than a fingertip away when using the Newcastle University Mobile App.
Available on iOS and Android platforms the App can be easily downloaded and installed onto your mobile device allowing you to search the library for that key text or article anytime anywhere.
It’s so quick and easy to use that you’ll be Boolean searching resources AND reserving books at home or on the go, in no time.
Hello and a warm welcome from all of us here at the Walton Library!
With the beginning of the year in mind (and what a year this is looking to be!) we wanted to make sure you are familiar with at least some of our faces.
Aimee, our Deputy Medical Sciences Librarian will begin by welcoming you all and talking a little bit about her role and the role of the Walton Library Liaison Team.
Compared to previous years, we won’t get to see as many of you as we would like, but we want to assure you that we are real and still very keen to help. So, let’s hear from Helen, one of our Library Aides, who ensures that physical resources are tidy and readily available, but is also here to welcome you when you come to the library, help you find your study space and your books.
A lot of work is put in ensuring that the academic resources required for your course are available. This extends from liaising with your lecturers and putting together reading lists of essential and recommended material, to ensuring that you can access these resources, to delivering session that will help you make the most out of them, as Marian, the Assistant Librarian in the Liaison team will explain.
Our Library assistants have a huge role in the reading list process as they check, double check and triple check… and then they check again that things work well. Elizabeth has a role in all of this, but she will also explain what she does when we receive new books and they need to be sorted and catalogued.
While we do have a lot of online resources on the website that will help you teach yourself a variety of academic skills, it can be quite daunting sometimes to find your way to the correct link, on the correct page, for the correct resource. That is why we are also happy to give you one-to-one guidance and point you in the right direction and if you ever get stuck, do our best to answer your questions. Bogdan will tell you in a few words how much he enjoys this element of interacting with you all.
Remember, you can always ask for assistance via Library Help.
This Oxford University Press resource contains most of the essential, recommended and background reading titles you would normally find listed in your Newcastle Law School module handbooks and on the Law Library shelves.
If you’re asking if you need to buy your course texts for 2020/21 then we can’t answer that question for you, as the answer depends on you. Ask yourself: can you work with e-books? Do you prefer to have your own copy of a book so you can fold pages, write notes in the margins or use a highlighter to annotate the text (*librarians across the world gasp in horror!*). Can the University Library provide a copy of the book you need to use via the Click+Collect service? We certainly can’t provide a copy of every book to every single student even when we want to. We do advise you to try OUP Law Trove and see how easy it is to access, and how versatile it can be (including annotating the text!). It may just save you spending money on books where you don’t need to.
Read on, or you can take a tour of the resource before diving in. OUP have released a YouTube playlist for you to watch to make the most of OUP Law Trove too.
Logging in You can access OUP Law Trove directly via Library Search (log in with your Campus ID and password), via your Reading Lists in your Canvas modules, and directly too. You can go to OUP Law Trove and use the ‘Sign in via your institution’ option in the left-hand login box on the homepage, and follow the instructions.
Further guidance on logging in is provided by OUP in this video (1:26 mins):
Searching You can search OUP Law Trove by author, title or keyword. You can narrow your search to those titles available to us alone by selecting Show titles in my subscription (left-hand menu). Select those that are unlocked or free.
You can further narrow your results by refining by subject using the options available in the left-hand menu.
Further guidance on navigating and searching is provided by OUP in this video (2:55 mins):
Personalisation You can create a Personal Profile to experience the full functionality of OUP Law Trove, including bookmarking and annotating (without writing on your books!). Click the ‘Sign in’ button on the top menu bar and follow the instructions.
Further information on the benefits of creating and using the Personal Profiles features is provided by OUP in this video (0:58 mins):
Reading Lists and Handouts You may find your module teaching staff are using the DOI: for a specific book or chapter from your Reading List or module handout. What’s a DOI? A Digital Object Identifier. It’s a ‘permalink’ (permanent link) to the specific materials you need to read and looks like a weblink (which it is, essentially). If it doesn’t directly link to OUP Law Trove then add https://dx.doi.org/ to create the full DOI link. You will still be asked to login using your Campus ID & password to gain access to the materials.
Tips Search OUP Law Trove directly for your resources if you can. Library Search and your Reading Lists are linking to most of the books, and some of the chapters available, but not all. You may find more resources by performing a keyword search; the results could show a useful chapter in another book that you would never have thought to search in.
You have access to some good study skills information in OUP Law Trove too. Whether you are wondering what academic writing actually is, how to write a case note, how to prepare for a moot or dealing with an exam, there are materials in Trove to assist you alongside the Academic Skills Kit made available to you by the University, the University Library and the Writing Development Centre.
Further information on the online resources, including MCQs, is provided by OUP in this video (2:12 mins):
We think you will find this resource very useful in supporting your studies at Newcastle Law School. If you have any feedback or questions, please leave a comment or contact libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk.
Whether you’re a fresher or a
final year student we want to help you get the most from your Library. From
discovering resources to finding the right study space, to where to go to get help
with your coursework. So, here are a couple of ways you can settle in and join
in at the Library:
Virtual Escape Game and Prize Draw
There’s something strange going on at the
Library – something about dangerous magical beasts and impossible riddles. It
all sounds like an elaborate freshers’ week prank…but what if there’s
something more going on?
Challenge yourself to our exciting Escape Game and enter our prize draw to be in with a chance of winning a £25 Amazon voucher! (There are five runner-up prizes too, so lots of chances to win!) Play individually or work with a team of friends on Zoom (or other video conferencing tool of choice) to solve the puzzles and save the Library!
Newcastle Beginnings
The Liaison Team have been working alongside services
from across the University to create and deliver our Library induction online
as part of the Newcastle Beginnings programme.
Available to all students in Canvas, it is designed to enable new
students to get started with the Library and act as a refresher for returning
students. You’ll find an introduction to our services, an overview of the
resources and support available for your subject area, guides on how to get the
best results from Library Search, and advice on accessing materials and support
from the Library wherever you are studying this semester.
This year’s rather unique circumstances mean that we’re managing our services and facilities more flexibly and that things may change at short notice. The best way for you to keep informed and up to date on availability of study spaces, and access to facilities and resources is to keep a weather-eye on the Library website, which will be regularly updated with any important changes.
We’ll be adding notifications to the Library pages of the University app and sharing news via our Twitter and Instagram pages too.
Want to ask us a question?
Library Help is available 24/7 – you can browse our FAQ database by topic or search it by using keywords; send us an email or chat with us about your query. We’re happy to help!
We have been very busy over the summer adding to our growing collection of e-resources to support your studies and research. Discover individual titles in Library Search and browse some of the new collections now available to you below.
We have also invested in continued access to our Evidence-Based Acquisition (EBA) collections from multiple publishers, so you can browse and access hundreds of ebook titles and we can see which are the most popular titles for our students and researchers.
Tag each item using the appropriate tag (i.e. essential, recommended or background reading), where: Essential = very important to the course, all students will need to use this text. Recommended = supplementary texts which students are encouraged to use. Background = additional texts which are suggested for background subject area reading.
Send your list to the library for checking and stock orders.
Publish your list to ensure your students can access it.
Things to know:
Tagging each item with essential, recommended and background can generate book orders: there are book/student ratio ordering criteria for items being added to library stock and tagging will allow informed decisions to be made by the Library’s team.
Given we are in the midst of a pandemic and teaching is being undertaken in a different way this term, the Library will attempt to obtain access to all resources online (e.g. e-books) where possible. Please note we do try our best but not everything is available online! Where we can’t obtain an online resource, we will usually opt for the print instead.
There is a Canvas course prepared for you to learn how to use Reading Lists. It’s short and full of useful information on making the best use of the service for your students. Self-enrol on Reading Lists Training for Staff today.
If you would prefer to submit your reading list or lecture/seminar handout to a dedicated team of Library staff to be processed, use the submission form or email the lists to readinglists@ncl.ac.ukfor support.
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.
The University’s Virtual Learning Environment has been changed to Canvas. After years of using Blackboard, it’s a bit different! But once you start to use it, you’ll find it’s much easier to present the information your students need, to communicate with your students in word, sight and sound, and to work more easily in this online world brought on us by the pandemic.
Why talk of Canvas when this post is about Reading Lists? Well, Canvas makes your reading list for each module more visible so you are more likely to be asked about the lists by your students.
The LTDS Canvas Baseline states ‘…where relevant a reading list must be provided.’
So what you should do? Not all modules will need a reading list. But if you do have books, book chapters or journal articles you want your students to read and would like to learn how to manage items on your Reading List yourself, please self-enrol on the Reading Lists Training for Staff course which is available via Canvas. It will explain each stage of creating and editing your lists and will allow you to keep in touch with the Library about the materials you need to support your teaching.
A reading list is an integral part of the student experience at University. Although it may be viewed as an archaic term these days, students are ‘reading’ for a degree. How do the students know what to read? It is the academic’s role to guide them.
The University Library’s Reading Lists service (Leganto) allows the Library to work with teaching staff in providing this information to the students in an online and consistent way, through their Virtual Learning Environment (Canvas or the Medical LE) alongside their teaching materials.
The University Library’s Reading Lists service is routinely promoted to the students throughout induction. It contains essential, recommended and background reading for modules taught within Newcastle University. Now we’re using Canvas, it also appears in the standard menu within each course and will be more accessible than in our former VLE.
So, as teaching staff, what are the benefits of using this service?
You have control and can create, manage and update your own reading lists online.
The Library will ensure online access to resources (if available). If an e-book is not available then the correct number of print copies will be purchased based on the essential, recommended or background reading tags you apply to each item on your list.
Essential, recommended and background reading tags help students prioritise their reading.
CLA scans (digitised book chapters and articles) can easily be requested and acccessed through Leganto. There will be no need to email us or fill out a web request form; simply tag the item on your list and the Library will do the rest.
The same principle applies to new books. Once on the reading list this information will trigger adding new material to our stock – there will be no need to contact us separately.
You can export a reading list to your module guide or handouts. This will save you time by only needing to create the list in one place.
Using this system is a wise choice as it ensures the Library knows what you need to support your teaching and will offer your students direct access to the required resources.
Skills for Study is an online, interactive package which focuses on key academic skills. It is aimed primarily at undergraduate students but can be useful for all levels. The package is composed of 12 separate modules, each of which can be used independently or in combination with other modules. It can be used as a stand alone product via a direct link or embedded into Canvas. To see how this works – see this video from Hull University. There is an element of personalisation as students can do their own diagnostic test to see which areas of academic skills they need to work on and then keep their own journal in the platform to reflect on their learning.
Select the login button which will take you to the screen below.
Click on institutional login.
Skills for study log in page
When prompted, input Newcastle and select Newcastle University. You will then be able to use your Newcastle login to access the platform. The trial is available until 30th September 2020. As always, your feedback will be very welcome: you can either email it, or leave a comment on this blogpost.
