Tag: Architecture, Planning and Landscape

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Reading Lists and Canvas

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.

An image of the Canvas Home screen showing the main menu including Library Reading List.

The LTDS Canvas Baseline states ‘…where relevant a reading list must be provided.’

An image of the Canvas Baseline which mentions the Reading List requirement.

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.

An image of a barn owl sitting in a meadow advertising the wise choice of using the Library's Reading Lists service.

Alternatively, you may wish to produce your reading list in a Microsoft Word document, or module handbook, and submit this to our dedicated Library Reading Lists team to create your online version.

If you have any questions about Reading Lists, please contact Library Help and a member of the Reading Lists team will be in touch.

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Reading Lists

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.

An image of a Canvas course homepage.

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.

You can find more information on this service via our website, or contact the reading list email.

An image of a wise barn owl over Leganto, the Reading Lists service.
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Resource in Focus: RIBA eBook collection

We have 89 eBook titles available through a partnership between RIBA and Taylor & Francis. We like them as they are available on a unlimited DRM free model.

All titles are available through our catalogue, Library Search.

Follow the links to the platform which supply that title e.g. the large blue button to the “Royal Institute of British Architects Books”

Once you are transferred to the Taylor and Francis platform you will see options to navigate to specific chapters or content, download read online. Once you’re inside the eBook then you can keyword search, make the text size larger/smaller or jump into chapters.

The full list of titles includes :

101 Rules of Thumb for Low Energy Architecture
101 Rules of Thumb for Sustainable Buildings and Cities
20/20 Visions
A Gendered Profession
Age-friendly Housing
An Architect’s Guide to Public Procurement
An Introduction to Architectural Conservation
An Introduction to Passive House
Architect’s Guide to NEC4
Assembling a Collaborative Project Team
Automatic for the City
Avoiding and Resolving Disputes
Being an Effective Construction Client
Better Buildings
BIM Demystified
Biomimicry in Architecture
Briefing
Building Condition Surveys
Building in Arcadia
Building Revolutions
CDM 2015
Chinese Urban Transformation
Climax City
Commercial Client’s Guide to Engaging an Architect
Competition Grid
Conservation
Construction
Contemporary Vernacular Design
Contract Administration
Creating Winning Bids
Demystifying Architectural Research
Design
Design for Biodiversity
Design for Climate Change
Design Management
Designed to Perform
Desire Lines
Domestic Client’s Guide to Engaging an Architect
Extensions of Time
Financial Management
Future Campus
Future Office
Future Schools
Good Office Design
Guide to JCT Design and Build Contract 2016
Guide to JCT Intermediate Building Contract 2016
Guide to JCT Minor Works Building Contract 2016
Guide to JCT Standard Building Contract 2016
Guide to RIBA Domestic and Concise Building Contracts 2018
Guide to RIBA Professional Services Contracts 2018
Guide to the RIBA Domestic and Concise Building Contracts 2014
Guide to Using the RIBA Plan of Work 2013
Happy by Design
Health and Safety
How Buildings Work
HR for Creative Companies
Information Exchanges
Lead Designer’s Handbook
Light in Architecture
Loft Conversion Handbook
Mediated Space
Mobilising Housing Histories
New Design for Old Buildings
Planning, Politics and City-Making
Principal Designer’s Handbook
Re-readings: 2
Rescue and Reuse
Residential Retrofit
Retrofit for Purpose
Retropioneers: Architecture Redefined
Revisiting Postmodernism
Revolution
Small Practice and the Sole Practitioner
Social Housing
Starting a Practice
Sustainability
Sustainable Building Conservation
Targeting Zero
The Art of Building a Garden City
The BIM Management Handbook
The Design Companion for Planning and Placemaking
The Re-Use Atlas
This is Temporary
Town Planning
Urban Lighting for People
Wellbeing in Interiors
What Colour is your Building?
Wheelchair Housing Design Guide
ZEDlife
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Books added to the Library by students in SAPL (Semester One 2019/20)

We have a service called “Books on Time” for students. This allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Books on Time

In Semester One, academic year 2019/2020 we bought the following items after requests from students in SAPL.

There were 132 requests from 55 students totalling £4859.98 (33% from Undergraduate, 23% from Postgraduate taught and 25% from Postgraduate Research)

Title Now in stock
R 128 by Werner Sobek: Bauen im 21. Jahrhundert, architecture in the 21st century 1xlong
A History of Future Cities 1xlong
A History of Metallography 1xlong
Al Manakh 2: Export Gulf (vol 23) 1xlong
Al Manakh: Dubai Guide, Gulf Survey (vol 12) 1xlong
An Architectural Model 1xlong
An Atlas of Geographical Wonders 1xlong
Angels and wild things : the archetypal poetics of Maurice Sendak 1xlong
Architectural Model Building 1xlong
Architectural Tiles: Conservation and Restoration 1xlong
Architecture Interruptus 2xlong
Architetti-pittori e pittori-architetti 1xlong
Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet 1xlong
Autogeddon 1xlong
Automatic for the City Designing for People in the Age of the Driverless Car 1xlong, 1xebook
Between Dystopia and Utopia 1xlong
Biomimetics for Architecture: Learning from Nature 1xlong
Breaking Ground: Architecture by Women 1xlong
Caldecott & Co. notes on books & pictures 1xlong
Calton Hill: And the plans for Edinburgh’s Third New Town 1xlong
Carlo Scarpa: the complete works 2xlong
Cartographies of the absolute 1xlong
Cities, Words and Images 1xlong
Constant: New Babylon 1xlong
Cosmos of Light: the sacred architecture of Le Corbusier 1xlong
Country 1xlong
Creating Nationality in Central Europe, 1880-1950 1xebook
Cultural Identity and Urban Change in Southeast Asia: Interpretative Essays 1xlong
Democracy in Modern Iran: Islam, Culture, and Political Change 1xlong
Design Process in Architecture: From Concept to Completion 1xlong
Designing research for publication 1xlong
Drawing support: murals in the North of Ireland 1xlong
Drone: Object Lessons 1xlong
Dubai, the City as Corporation 29/11/2019
Dubai: Behind an Urban Spectacle 1xlong, 1xebook
Edinburgh 1xlong
Edinburgh: Mapping the City 1xlong
Experimental Architecture: Designing the Unknown 2xlong
Facing Gaia 3xlong
Fitzgerald: Geography of a Revolution (Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation) 1xlong
Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam-Power and the Roots of Global Warming 1xlong
From Meetinghouse to Megachurch: A Material and Cultural History 1xlong
From What Is to What If: Unleashing the Power of Imagination to Create the Future We Want 1xlong
Greening modernism: preservation, sustainability, and the modern movement 1xlong
Gross ideas: tales of tomorrow’s architecture 1xlong
Hanoi: City of the Rising Dragon 1xlong
Health and Comfort in House Building 1xlong
Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery 1xlong
Hello World: How to be Human in the Age of the Machine – Signed Special Edition 1xlong
Hipster Christianity: When Church and Cool Collide 1xlong
How to Fix Your Academic Writing Trouble A practical guide 1xlong
Hungry City: how good shapes our lives 2xlong
Hungry Planet 1xlong
Hybrid Urbanism: On the Identity Discourse and the Built Environment 1xlong
Illegal Architect 1xlong
Imagined Futures Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics 1xlong
Industrial heritage re-tooled: the TICCIH guide 1xlong
Inside Picture Books 1xlong
interact or die 1xlong
Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City 1xlong
Lace not Lace: Contemporary Fiber Art from Lacemaking Techniques 1xlong
Landscape, Race and Memory: Material Ecologies of Citizenship 1xlong
Leeds: Shaping the City 1xlong
Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital 1xlong
Living with Buildings: And Walking with Ghosts 1xlong
Lo-TEK, Design by Radical Indigenism 1xlong
Lucy Skaer 1xlong
Marginality and exclusion in Egypt 1xlong
Material Imagination in Architecture 1xebook
Me, Me, Me: The Search for Community in Post-war England 1xlong
Meat Market: Female flesh under Capitalism 1xlong
Migrant City (Routledge Advances in Ethnography) 1xlong
Model Making: Conceive, Create and Convince 1xlong
Moravia Manifesto 1xlong
New Frontiers of Architecture: Dubai Between Vision and Reality 1xlong
Non-places 14xlong
Notes on the Ventilation and Warming of Houses, Churches, Schools, and Other Buildings 1xlong
O&O Baukunst: View of the interior 1xlong
Performing Remains: Art and War in Times of Theatrical Re-enactment: On Performing Remains 1xlong
Pleasure: the architecture and design of Rockwell group 1xlong
Plunder of the commons 1xlong
Preserving the world’s great cities 1xlong
Productive Postmodernism: Consuming Histories and Cultural Studies 1xebook
Reading Architecture: Literary Imagination and Architectural Experience 1xlong
Replications: Archaeology, Art History, Psychoanalysis 1xlong
Resilience and Ageing Creativity, Culture and Community 1xlong
Retail Apocalypse: The Death of Malls, Retailers & Jobs 1xlong
Retail Therapy: Why the Retail Industry is Broken – and What Can be Done to Fix It 1xlong
Rossville Flats: The Rise and Fall 1xlong
sand To Silicon: Achieving Rapid Growth Lessons from Dubai 1xlong
Soft City: Building Density for Everyday Life 1xlong
Sport, leisure and culture in the postmodern city 1xlong
Temporary Cities: Resisting Transience in Arabia (Planning, History and Environment Series) 1xlong
The architectural tourist: architectural impressions of Europe 1xlong
The Architectural Tourist: Part 2 (RIAS) 1xlong
The Architecture School Survival Guide 1xlong
The Art of Maurice Sendak 1xlong
The Biophilia Hypothesis 1xebook
The Building Regulations: Explained and Illustrated 1xlong
The Case for Subtle Ar(t)chitecture 1xlong
The Chief Secretary: Augustine Birrell in Ireland 1xlong
The Fungi / 3rd edition 1xebook
The Future of Fashion: Understanding Sustainability in the Fashion Industry 1xlong
The Memory Palace: A Book of Lost Interiors 1xlong
The Mental and the Material 1xlong
The Narrator’s Voice: Dilemma of Children’s Fiction 1xlong
The New Town of Edinburgh: An Architectural Celebration 1xlong
The Picturesque 1xlong
The politics of design in French colonial urbanism 1xlong
The Right to the Smart City 1xlong, 1xebook
The Routledge Companion to Picture-books 1xlong
The Rule of the Land: Walking Ireland’s Border Book 1xlong
The secret block for a secret person in Ireland 1xlong
The Smart City in a Digital World 1xebook
The Tenement Handbook: A Practical Guide 1xlong
The Town Below the Ground: Edinburgh’s Legendary City 1xlong
The Urban Moment: Cosmopolitan Essays on the Late 20th Century City 1xlong
Timespace and International Migration 1xlong
Tokyo 1xlong
Traducción y traductología introducción a la traductología 1xlong
Trash Culture: Objects and Obsolescence in Cultural Perspective 1xlong
UAE and the Gulf: Architecture and Urbanism Now 1xlong
Vancouverism 1xlong
Vexed Texts: How Children’s Picture Books Promote Illiteracy 1xlong
Wardrobe Crisis: How We Went from Sunday Best to Fast Fashion 1xlong
Ways of the Illustrator 1xlong
Whale and the Reactor 1xlong
Why are we the Good Guys? 1xlong
Why Fashion Matters 1xlong
Why look at plants? 1xlong
Why We Can’t Afford the Rich 1xlong
Would you kill the fat man? The trolley problem and what your answer 1xebook
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The Research Reserve and Desktop Delivery Service (DDS)

The exterior of the Research Reserve facility in the Team Valley.

The eagle-eyed amongst you may have noticed a curious thing on Library Search. Where normally you would expect to see the name of one of the libraries next to an item’s shelfmark, occasionally you’ll see “Research Reserve”.

If you’ve ever wondered just what exactly the Research Reserve is, this is the blog for you, discover here exactly what the Research Reserve can offer you and your studies.

Before an item’s shelfmark is its location. This book is held off-site at the Research Reserve facility in the Team Valley.

The Research Reserve is the Library’s stores, located throughout campus and including a state-of-the-art storage facility in the Team Valley. These facilities allow the Library to keep less-used material for much longer than other academic libraries. These combined storage facilities provide over 29 kilometres of storage space, which is used to house old editions of journals and books which are consulted infrequently.

If you’d like to request items from the Research Reserve facilities, click the “Request Scan/Borrow” button once you’ve located the item on Library Search.

You can loan a variety of materials from the Research Reserve, including: books, theses and journal volumes. These can be requested from Library Search. Simply log in using your campus ID, find the item you are looking for and then click the blue “Request Scan/Borrow” button. You’ll get a choice of pickup locations (either the Walton or Philip Robinson libraries).

There are request forms to complete if you’d like to borrow a thesis or an entire volume of a journal.

Requests can be viewed by going to “My Account” in Library Search and clicking on “My Requests” from the drop down menu. If you’d like to cancel your request, simply click the blue cancel hyperlink (as seen below). You’ll receive an email confirming your cancellation shortly afterwards.

You can cancel requests for Research Reserve items by clicking the blue ‘Cancel’ hyperlink, as shown above.

There is a collection service that runs between the Research Reserve and the various libraries (weekdays only, not on bank holidays) and your request will be generally be fulfilled within 24 hours. Anything requested on a Friday or over the weekend will be delivered on the following Monday afternoon.

Once your item has arrived at your chosen library, you’ll receive an email letting you know it’s available to loan. The item will be kept on the reservations shelves for five days before being returned to the Team Valley, or passed on to the next person in the reservation queue. Items from the Research Reserve are issued in the same way as standard long loan items, either using the self-issue machines or at the service desk. Once you’ve finished with the item, simply return it as normal.

The Desktop Delivery Service (DDS)

The Desktop Delivery Service can also be reached at: http://dds.ncl.ac.uk

The Desktop Delivery Service (DDS) allows you request a scanned article from a journal held in one of the Library’s stores. Articles can be requested via Library Search (same as a book) or by filling out the relevant request form. Please try and include as much detail as possible on your request form. This helps Library staff locate your article and fulfil your request quicker.

You are only able to request one scanned article per journal issue. The scanned article will be delivered to your University email address, where it can be downloaded and printed off. Requests are generally fulfilled within 24 hours, although this may take longer over the weekends or on bank holidays. You have 30 days to download your article before it is ‘archived’ and no longer available.  

We do not scan items that are available electronically or can be borrowed.

If you have any other queries about the Desktop Delivery Service, read the FAQs.

Just some of the amazing treasures held at the Research Reserve facility in the Team Valley.

You can also visit the off-campus Research Reserve facility in the Team Valley. Daily access is available by appointment only with the Research Reserve team, weekdays between 10AM and 4PM. Access outside of these hours can be organised given sufficient notice. There is a large car park available at the facility and buses stop nearby.

Full contact information, directions and opening hours for the Team Valley facility are available via the Library website.

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Resource on trial: SAGE Research Methods

SAGE Research Methods is the ultimate methods library, with more than 1,000 books, reference works, journal articles, and instructional videos by world leading academics from across the social sciences, including the largest collection of qualitative methods books available online from any scholarly publisher.
The resources cover the steps of coming up with a research question, doing a literature review, planning a project, collecting and analyzing data, and writing up a report, dissertation, or thesis, plus detailed information on hundreds of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods.

For student research
• Essential supplementary support for course learning and for students working on dissertations and research projects 
• More than 220,000 pages of content covering hundreds of methodological approaches help students at every step of their project
• Concise author videos answer basic questions like “How do I choose between different research methods?” and “What do you mean by the term ‘ethnography’?”
For faculty research
• Offers critical support in learning new techniques and methods
• Provides crucial resources to help faculty write up their methodology for publication in the best research journals
• Provides in-depth understanding of advanced methods and includes online access to the complete Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences (QASS) series, also known as “The Little Green Books,” as well as the Qualitative Research Methods Series (QRMS), or “The Little Blue Books”
For teaching research methods
• Serves as the perfect complement to coursework and traditional textbooks in research methods courses for business, communication, criminology, education, health sciences, psychology, political science, social work, and sociology
• Provides sample assignments that help students easily connect to concepts
• Aids faculty who oversee research papers and theses requiring original research


The trial is available until 31st May 2020.

As always, your feedback will be very welcome: you can either email it, or leave a comment on this blogpost.

Access SAGE Research Methods via Library Search.

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Are you preparing a dissertation or project, or will be doing so next academic year?

Make sure you visit our interactive dissertation and project guide. Based on the extensive experience of staff from the Library and Writing Development Centre, this guide includes an interactive search planner, which takes you through the different stages of developing your search strategy, and enables you to create and download your personalised search plan: you can even ask for feedback on it from the Library liaison team.

The search planner is complemented by a project proposal planner, developed by our colleagues in the Writing Development Centre, to help you develop or refine your research proposal.

The guide also points you to further advice on a wide range of relevant skills, to give you advanced knowhow in finding, managing and evaluating information. For example: where to find specialised information resources for your subject area, and methods to keep your literature search up to date over a long period.

It’s easy to navigate, with clear text and short videos throughout. Whether you are already underway with your dissertation, or just starting to think about it, we’re sure you will find it helpful!

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Kick-off your information search

Preparing a dissertation or project?

Before you start, take a look at our interactive Search Planner, part of our Dissertations and research projects guide.

This toolkit takes you through all the stages of developing your search strategy. Step by step, the planner helps you take a closer look at your question, to identify important concepts, themes and keywords. You can keep adding, editing and refining this as you go, and even create and download your own personalised search plan and email it to yourself, your tutor or librarian for feedback

The guide contains further 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. So make sure you check it out.

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Reading Lists for Semester 2

An image of the Library's Reading List service with a wise owl.

Are you teaching in semester 2? Then it’s time to start thinking about the reading you will be recommending to your students to support their learning.

Use the Library’s Reading Lists to create, manage and update your own lists online. Or, you can send your reading list or module handout 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) are also easily be requested through Reading Lists too. Simply tag each item on your list as essential, recommended or background reading and we will do the rest.

Reading Lists are embedded into Canvas and you should see them in the left hand menu within each Module.

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.

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Sustainability

We are rather proud of our new Sustainability Guide, created in collaboration with one of our quite brilliant SAgE PhD students, Georgios Pexas – actually he did all the hard work by providing all of the content!

This guide looks at Sustainability regarding the key resources available from the Library around the three main pillars of sustainability: Environment, Economy and Society. We particularly like Georgios’ opening paragraph for our guide explaining what sustainability is and its relation to these three pillars:

“As defined by the “Brundtland Commission” in 1987, sustainability is the ability to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. In other words, it describes living within the limits of available natural, physical and social resources and in ways that allow our environment to thrive in perpetuity; a concept that can be summarised as: “enough, for all, forever”. Sustainability approaches the issue of resource depletion holistically, unifying Environmental, Economical and Social concerns.”

The Guide also points to researchers on campus that are focusing on sustainability. It has a useful RSS feed of ‘sustainability’ in the news and invaluable links regarding careers and development in sustainability: professional associations, funding opportunities, where to look for jobs, and some upcoming events.

You will find the Sustainability Guide in the SAgE section of the Subject Guides, as it focuses on natural sciences and engineering side of sustainability, however we would love to have a section on how we as individuals can be more sustainable. We are trying to keep this Guide concise, yet useful, yet we welcome any new ideas for this guide, so please contact lorna.smith@ncl.ac.uk if you think of anything worth adding.