Exams are a tricky time. Often you will be juggling different exams themselves, on top of other deadlines. However, we want you to know that you aren’t alone at this crazy time of year. We are here to help you through.
But how exactly can we help? Sadly, we can’t take go into the exam with you, or magically freeze time to give you more hours in the day, but do make the most of the following:
Library Help – the place to go when have a question via chat, email, text, twitter, Facebook. Or alternatively search our Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) database.
Librarians – yes you heard right. Book a one-to-one appointment to get the best out of the University Library resources. Also remember our staff in every library are friendly and approachable. There is no such thing as a silly question, so ask away!
Study Space– The University Library has a range of different study rooms and spaces to suit your needs.
24/7 – The Philip Robinson Library is open 24/7 during the exam period. We want you to sleep and get enough rest, but if you do need to study through the night, we are here.
Subject guides – we have a range of subject guides put together by expert librarians which draw together all the main resources for your studies.
Be well@NCL collection – we don’t just have books for study. This new collection includes tried and tested books that support your wellbeing.
Returning to University in January means one thing: it’s time to start revising for your exams. Study Well @ NCL is a campaign run by the Library, NUSU (Newcastle University Students Union) and NUIT (Newcastle University IT Service) advocating a responsible approach to studying and encouraging positive behaviours in study spaces. We all know it can be stressful at this time of the year – but we’re here to make things easier. So, what exactly are we doing?
Extended Opening
Hours
Here in the Walton Library from 6th – 24th January, 2020 we’ll be extending our opening hours opening from 8:30 until midnight, Monday to Friday and 10AM until midnight on weekends. You can check our extended opening times here on the Library website.
Noise Alert Service
We’ll be monitoring our Noise Alert phone very closely during this time. Wherever you are in the Walton, you can text us at 07891 484764 and we’ll investigate the source of the noise issue as soon as possible. You can also contact us on Library Help to report a noise complaint.
Housekeeping
During busy periods staff will be checking to see:
where seats are available (and clearing unattended desks after 30 minutes of inactivity).
that bins are emptied.
that bathrooms are clean.
that walkways are kept clear.
How you can help
Choose a study space suited to your preferred choice of
study. There are silent, quiet and collaborative study spaces to choose from. Please
be considerate of fellow Library users.
Do be mindful of the food and drink policy within your
chosen study area. Remember, you can only eat hot and strong smelling food in
the café area.
Let staff know if there’s something that’s been missed. It’s not always possible for us to know if there’s a shortage of towels in the bathroom or if a waste bin needs emptying. Please contact us if you notice something and we’ll do our best to fix it straightaway.
Looking after
yourself
We encourage all Library users to take regular study breaks. Taking the time to get a drink of water or some fresh air can make all the difference to your study session. Why not stop by our display table (located near the main entrance) and pick up a Sudoku puzzle or desk yoga instructions? However, to be fair to all Library users, we’re asking that breaks away from your study space are no more than 30 minutes.
Colour your Campus
On lighter note, we’ll be providing pens, pencils and colouring sheets for you to relax and unwind with. Hand your completed sheet in to a member of Library staff with your name or Twitter handle on the back and we’ll display it in the Library and enter your masterpiece into a draw to win some fabulous Library prizes.
Off The Shelf
Sue Spencer returns to the Walton Library on Thursday 16th January (3-5PM) to dispense personalised poetry pick-me-up’s designed to soothe and inspire. Take a study break, chat with Sue and receive your own poetry prescription. You can find out more about Off The Shelf here.
We hope that Study Well @ NCL provides you with a peaceful
and productive study environment and allows you to achieve maximum studying
satisfaction. We welcome feedback on how we can change or improve Study Well @ NCL.
You can ‘Tell Us
What You Think’ online or get a form in the Walton Library.
Do you need help to understand your mental health and wellbeing?
Are looking to understand your subject from a different point of view?
Then take a look at the collections below. These will get you reading around and outside of your subject and could benefit your health and wellbeing. Both collections can be found in the Quiet Study area of the Walton Library.
Be well@NCL is a collection of books designed to help manage and understand common mental health conditions and wellbeing. Reading a book by someone who understands what you are facing can help you start to feel better. The books within the collection are recommended by professionals and are available to borrow. The Philip Robinson and Walton libraries have the same collection of books.
Content
of the collection
The collection offers books that can help with
a wide range of issues and concerns. The collection includes titles that offer
more healthy ways of thinking, such as practicing mindfulness and challenging
unhelpful thought patterns. There are also books about common feelings,
experiences, and issues, such as:
Anger
Anxiety – including health anxiety and social anxiety
Bereavement, loss and grief
Body image issues and Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Caring for someone with a mental health issue
Depression – including postnatal depression
Eating disorders and eating distress
Low self-esteem
Mood swings
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
Phobias and panic
Sleep problems
Stress
If you find the book you are reading is not helping, please contact your GP or health professional. If you are a student you can also contact the University’s counselling team.
If the book you want is out on loan then please make a Reservation. If there is high demand for a book this alerts library staff to potentially order more.
Pick up a Be well@NCL postcard from the Walton Library desk or find out more here.
The Medicine in Literature collection captures the complexities of what it means to be human through a wide range of literary genres. Representations of illness, dis-ease, healing and health are interwoven themes that give voice to a diversity of perspectives and experiences. If you are interested in exploring your subject from a different viewpoint or simply want to broaden your reading, dive right in! The collection includes books and DVDs.
Topics covered include:
Alzheimer’s
Anxiety
Autism
Bipolar Disorder
Brain Disorders
Cancer
Coma
Cystic Fibrosis
Dementia
Depression
Eating Disorders
Epilepsy
HIV/AIDS
Leukaemia
Locked-In Syndrome
Mental Illness
Motor Neurone Disease
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Parkinson’s
Polio
Schizophrenia
Stroke
Go and have a look at both of these collections in the Quiet Study area of the Walton Library.
Not one for New Year’s Resolutions? Well, how about a challenge?
Why not try a 20-minute-a-day-reading-for-pleasure challenge?
Pick something from the Law in Literature and Medicine in Literature collections, something from the Philip Robinson Library, or your own book shelves, and start today!
We all know that reading for pleasure is a good thing – pleasure is good! But it’s good for de-stressing, positive wellbeing, conversation, imagination, empathy, a break, engagement… READaxation! Don’t just take my word for it, click HERE for research by The Reading Agency.
Of course, if you read more than 20 minutes then… YES!
Share what you’re reading with your friends and family, colleagues and fellow students, comment on here, or even the social media world – #ReadingChallenge.
Did you know that across our four locations, we have over 3,000 study spaces? With so many, it’s easy to choose the best spot to revise or write your essay.
Our Study spaces and rooms page has more information about the types of spaces available. Check out current study space availability information on the web or via the Newcastle University app. Find free cluster spaces with the Find a PC function, also available on the app.
As well as study spaces, we have spaces where you can relax and catch up with friends between lectures. Make yourself comfortable in our new social space on level 2 of the Philip Robinson Library, or visit the refurbished café.
So if you need a change of scenery, go and take a look and find a space that’s just right for you.
The official blurb on EndNote is
that it is “…the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing
bibliographies, citations and references.”
Have you drifted off yet? Don’t – read on!
EndNote takes a little getting used to
and we recommend you familiarise yourself with it at the start of your research
process. But as Library Staff, we wouldn’t spend a
significant amount of time demonstrating and training our academic staff and
students on what EndNote is, and how to use it, if we didn’t think it was
valuable. It will save you a huge amount of
time in terms of writing up your assignments.
Essentially, you can use EndNote to
create and organise a personal library of resources relevant to your research.
You can import references from Library Search, and a huge range of databases such
as Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and Business Source Complete. You can ask EndNote to locate
the full-text PDFs of the resources you are going to use in your research, and
you can annotate them as you wish too. Did you know you can instruct Google Scholar to
import references into EndNote? No? Try
it. Finally, if you already have materials stored in your home
folder (H:\) then you can attach them to a manually-created
reference within EndNote, bringing all your research together in one place.
In addition to organising your
references (and this is the clever bit) you can then get EndNote to ‘talk’ to
your word processing software, e.g. Microsoft
Word, and insert the citations into your work for you in your
chosen referencing style, e.g. Harvard at Newcastle,
Vancouver, APA or MLA. If you don’t want to do that, then EndNote will also
allow you to create an independent bibliography of your references, saving you
an awful lot of typing.
Using EndNote
Intrigued? You should be. Take a look at our EndNote Guide. It contains all the introductory information you need, step-by-step workbooks to train yourself on the use of EndNote (the Desktop and Online versions), videos, useful FAQs, and contacts for help, should you need it.
Finally, Newcastle University
provides support for EndNote but it is not compulsory to use. You may
prefer Mendeley, Zotero, RefWorks or another piece of bibliographic
management software. That’s fine, whatever makes your referencing lives easier. Go on, give them a try.
A common mistake made in referencing is grouping all sources
found online under the category and reference type of a website. Your aim
should be to reference the information you have in front of you rather than
where it was sourced. Simply grouping items found online as a website would be
the equivalent of referencing a book by the publisher details rather than the
author and title.
For example, a government publication found online would be referenced
like this in Chicago.
United Kingdom. Department for Education. Cloud computing: how schools can move services to the cloud. London: The Stationary Office, 2016. Accessed: November 4, 2019. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cloud-computing-how-schools-can-move-services-to-the-cloud.
An electronic journal article might appear like this in APA.
Gillum, J. (2012). Dyscalculia: Issues for
practice in education psychology. Educational Psychology in
Practice, 28(3), 287-297. doi:10.1080/02667363.2012.684344
While a video posted on the Tate website would look something like this
in Harvard.
TateShots (2016) Grayson Perry: think like an artist. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/talk/what-makes-artist-grayson-perry-conversation-sarah-thornton (Accessed: 11 November 2019).
Identifying the type of information you are using as well as the source, are
essential skills of evaluation and developing a critical approach to
information. In many cases you will be unconsciously using your judgment to
assess the value of information for your purpose. So when you are using any
source of information, ask yourself what it is you are looking at, what details
are recorded about it and whether it measures up as a quality piece of
information. You’ll find more guidance about evaluating information on
our Evaluating
Information guide.
These DNA models are part of the Walton’s clinical skills equipment collection. Ask at the desk to loan one today.
While exams may seem a long way away, it’s important to be prepared for them. You can minimise stress and maximise efficiency with a good revision timetable and organised notes.
You can also find helpful material to aid your revision at the Walton Library. Your subject support guide is full of information and resources, tailored to suit your programme of studies. There are boxes of flash cards covering a number of subjects available to borrow from our long loan collection – ask at the service desk if you are interested in loaning a set. You may also find it helpful to broaden your revision from notes and textbooks to include clinical skills equipment and books from our MCQ (Multiple Choice Question) section. This could be the difference between a good and a great exam result! You’ll find more information about both of these collections in this blog post, as well as where to find them and how to loan them.
Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) books
Books in the MCQ collection are located in the quiet study area. You can identify them by the green stickers on the book spines.
There are a variety of topics covered in our Multiple Choice Question (MCQ) section. Within the collection, you’ll find books to on a number of subjects from anaesthesia to surgery. There are also books to aid revision for specific exams – including OSCEs, PACES and MRCS.
If you’d like to browse the MCQ collection, go to Library Search. You’ll need to click the ‘Advanced Search’ link and then change the “Any field” drop down menu to say ‘Collection’. In the text space, enter “MCQs” and you can view the entire collection. You can narrow down your search by adding a subject, author or title if you’re interested in a specific topic.
You can search the entire MCQ collection by changing the search filters to “Collection” and adding MCQs in the text bar.
You can find the MCQ collection in the quiet study area of
the Walton Library. They’re easily identifiable by the green stickers on the
book’s spine.
The books are long loan – meaning you can have them for up to 20 weeks, providing they’re not requested by another Library user. If the MCQ book is already on loan, follow these instructions to place a request.
If there is a book you think would help your exam revision, use our Books on Time service and recommend it. Find out more about this service here.
Clinical skills equipment
At the Walton Library, there is a wide selection of clinical skills equipment available to loan. There are medical tools, like tendon hammers, sphygmomanometers and otoscopes. Anatomical models, such as skulls and teeth. Plus eye charts, DNA models and even a spine! (A model one, that is.)
You can borrow a skull from the service desk or the STC room at the Walton Library!
The main bulk of clinical skills equipment is located behind the service desk at the Walton Library. Ask a member of staff and they’ll retrieve it for you. You can have up to three clinical skills items on loan at any time. Unfortunately, you can’t place requests on the items if they’re all out on loan.
There are also a small number of skulls available to loan
from the Student Texts Collection (STC) room. You can loan them using the
self-issue machine in the STC.
You may have also noticed a collection of anatomical models on a table in the collaborative study area. These models are free to use within the Library for as long as you like – but they can’t be taken out of the Library.
Clinical skills equipment items are available as a next day loan. This means that if you borrow a skull at 9AM on a Monday morning, it needs to be returned before the Walton Library closes on Tuesday. Items in the clinical skills equipment collection are non-renewable.
Beyond the Walton, there is exam and revision assistance available from the wider Library services and the University. You may find it useful to check out the Academic Skills Kit (ASK) to learn more about different revision strategies and exam techniques. You can also use ASK to find out about available counselling and chaplaincy services to help combat exam stress. Follow this link to ASK!
Harvard at Newcastle is the most frequently used
referencing style and if your school does not have a preferred style, it is the
one that we would recommend. This is because there is the most comprehensive
guidance available for Harvard and it is a style that can manage referencing
all types of information. Whether you are referencing a book, news
article, Instagram or market research, the Harvard at Newcastle style has got
you covered.
There are many
variations of Harvard but the one used at Newcastle can be found in Cite Them Right. Harvard uses an in-text citation (Millican, 2018, p.12)
inserted in the text, coupled with a reference list at the end of the document,
which provides the key. Cite Them Right is available as a published book to borrow from the
library and Cite Them Right Online provides the same comprehensive
guidance in a searchable interface that can be accessed anywhere online. It
includes guidance about how to reference just about every type of information
you can think of, including the more tricky online sources such as social
media.
You will find the
Harvard at Newcastle style in EndNote on campus PCs and through the
RAS, and are able to download the style from our EndNote guide if you are using it locally
on your own device. We’ve also included some useful tips and advice about
getting to grips with Harvard on our referencing guide.
There are lots of different referencing styles, but which one is right for you?
Once you start creating
citations and references, you need to consider referencing styles. There are hundreds of them out there
and each has a slightly different set of rules about how citations and
reference lists should appear in your text.
Most Newcastle University students use the Harvard at Newcastle style, but there is also Vancouver, IEEE, OSCOLA, Chicago, and many more. Your lecturers will expect you to use one specific style and all of your citations and references should conform to that style accurately and consistently; same punctuation, same capitalisation, same everything.
We have lots of help about using some of the popular referencing styles in our Managing Information guide. The Cite Them Right website is also a valuable online resource that will show you how to hit all of the right steps on your way to mastering an individual referencing style.
