Spotlight on OnePetro

Looking for authoritative and comprehensive information on the oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) industry?  Then have a browse of OnePetro! A unique library of technical documents and peer reviewed articles, it includes full text documents of many key conference proceedings in the field and provides access to a number of subject relevant journals.

For a quick introduction to OnePetro, including how to search the database and how to use advanced features, take a look at our helpful video guide (4:49 min):

This video includes sections on:

0:29 – Accessing OnePetro
0:37 – Basic Search
2:57 – Exporting Citations
3:17 – Advanced Search
4:00 – Saving Searches and Setting up Alerts

Identify resources for your research project

A strong research project such as an essay, dissertation or thesis will always be supported by good quality information from a wide range of sources.  There are a huge variety of resources available to you and being able to make appropriate choices when selecting materials to include in your project and explain why you have chosen them, is an important academic skill that demonstrates a good awareness of your subject and an ability to think critically about ideas and research.

Of course, not all information resources will be relevant to your particular research.  You will have to think about the type of information you need then identify the type of resource that will provide that kind information.

For example:

Books will offer an in-depth overview of popular ideas, theories, and opinions in your subject area and are likely to be broader in scope than a journal article or conference paper.

While a conference paper will often discuss ‘work-in-progress’, and therefore can be an ideal way of finding out about up to date research and ideas.

For more information on different resource types, including standards, patents, maps, newspapers and more, take a look at our range of Resource guides.

Your Subject Guide can also help you identify useful sources of information for your research as it contains a carefully curated list of resources that are tailored to your subject area.  Here you’ll  find useful lists of online reference books, eBook collections and recommended databases for finding relevant journal articles and conference papers.  Also, under the Subject Specific Resources tab, you’ll discover a further host of specialised materials relevant to your subject such as audiovisual media, data-sets or professional organisation’s websites.

Screen capture of a Library Subject Guide, showing various tabs and resource links.

Depending on your research topic, you might also want to explore the Special Collections tab to see materials held in our Library archives that are relevant to your subject area specifically.

For more advice on finding and evaluating resources for your research take a look at our Finding Information and Evaluating Information Guides.

Dippy the Dinosaur and Climate Change Heroes

Dippy the Dinosaur ExhibitionThe 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.

 

Brush up on your search skills

A pot of paint brushes

Searching should be easy, right? We do it all the time in our day to day lives and with Google so ingrained into our existence, we don’t give it much thought. We type some words into the search engine and most of the time we find what we are looking for. Nothing to it!

However, while this approach certainly works for checking out cinema times or booking flights, it lets us down where research is concerned. We have high expectations that information will be quick and easy to come by and that it will be neatly organised in one place, rather than having to search in multiple locations, using different techniques. We imagine that the time consuming part of our research will be the analysing, synthesizing and the writing of it and we often don’t even think about the searching side of things.

The reality though is quite different. Without investing in our searching techniques and the development of a search plan, we can often find ourselves overwhelmed by information and not being able to see the wood from the trees. Our stress levels rise and our frustrations explode. Surely finding information shouldn’t be this hard!

The good news is, is that there is help to be had. Our job as Liaison Librarians is to equip you with the skills you need to create that all important search plan and to encourage you to pause and stop before you dive straight into finding information for your research.We have a fantastic range of online tools for you to do this, not least an interactive search planner that you can keep adding to throughout your search and which you can even email to yourself, supervisor or us as a Liaison team for feedback. And our ‘Finding Information’ academic skills guide has lots of advice on how to start a search, including how to break your concept down into manageable chunks and how to identify keywords and synonyms.

You can also check out this short video to get you started…….

Keep your eyes peeled for our next blog installment of how to find particular resources. See you then!

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Trial: Digimap Northern Ireland OS Data

Northern Ireland Ordinance Survey data via Digimap is free on trial until 31st July 2019.  Adding to our existing EDINA collection, the collection provides a range of raster and vector data at scales ranging from 1:2500 to 1:1 million. Aerial photographs are also included.

Ordinance survey data

 

Since this is a trial service, you will be required to delete any licensed data you hold on 31st July unless your institution chooses to take a subscription from 1st August 2019 onwards. Please bear this in mind when planning your work.

You can access Digimap via Library Search or our Maps library guide, log in with your university account and click on the Ordinance Survey tab to access the data.  Use the data download option to get access.  You will need to accept the license agreement the first time you use it.

Please explore and email us your feedback, or post it as a comment on this blog.

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. 

Pharmaceutical Substances on trial until 31st May 2019

Pills

We have trial access until 31st May 2019 to Pharmaceutical Substances from Thieme.

Pharmaceutical Substances is a one-stop source of information relating to the industrial synthesis and commercial applications of every licensed drug of significance. It provides ready access to syntheses, patents, and applications for more than 2,600 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs), including intermediates from the six most important markets.

Professors Axel Kleemann, Jürgen Engel, Bernhard Kutscher, and Dr. Dietmar Reichert present highly evaluated information collected from all the relevant literature and commercial patent data.

Pharmaceutical Substances is aimed at:

  • Researchers and process chemists
  • Teaching in the field of medicinal and pharmaceutical chemistry
  • Everyone involved in design, discovery, development, evaluation, and marketing of drugs

Please explore and if this resource would support your education or research activities then contact your Liaison Librarian with details.

New resource now available: Kanopy film streaming

We’re pleased to announce that following a successful trial, we now have access to the Kanopy on-demand film-streaming platform.

Kanopy provides access to over 30,000 films, including contemporary and classic feature films from around the world, and documentaries across a range of topics in arts, social sciences, science, technology and medicine. New films are added each month, and you can watch them on your preferred device.

Kanopy is very easy to use: simply search for a film by title, or browse by category. All the films are also individually catalogued on Library Search too, so you can find and access them that way as well.

You’ll find lots of useful features, including creating clips and playlists, viewing the transcript, and rating or adding comments.

Please note, as Kanopy is a ‘pay as you go’ service, we will assess demand during an initial pilot phase. If you’ve got any feedback about Kanopy, we’d be interested to receive it: just drop us an email or post it as a comment on this blog.

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