Do you have an assignment or research question and don’t know where to start? Search no further, your subject-specific LibGuide is only a few clicks away.
Follow the link above and then choose the Faculty and relevant School. Once you are there you will see the key resources that are provided for you:
Navigate to the ‘Journals and Databases’ tab. This will display the databases where you can search for the journal articles that you need. Don’t know how to use this avalanche of links? We have instructions:
From the Databases tab, click on the next tab along, in the centre of the screen that reads ‘Journals and Database Help’.
One-to-one help
Is the information too vast and you feel like you’ve hit a wall? You can ask your liaison librarian team for help. From the same navigation menu on the left side of the screen, click on ‘Subject Help and News’. There, you can find the team’s contact details and further down the page, you can request to book a one-to-one consultation with a member of the team.
Do you feel that your academic skills need to be polished a little? Don’t hesitate to look at our Academic Skills page from the Subject Support page:
You will find more guides on this page relating to how to find academic information, reference it, using EndNote, distinguishing between real information and fake news and many more.
Academic Writing
You can also get one-to-one help from the Writing Development Centre if you are struggling with study skills or academic writing.
The Max Planck Encyclopedias of Public International Law (MPIL) is now available to Newcastle University staff and students, particularly to those with an interest in international law. This is the definitive reference work on this subject area with over 1,700 peer-reviewed articles, authored by over 900 leading scholars and practitioners, to support your research.
MPIL gives access to the Max Planck Encyclopedia of Public International Law (MPEPIL) and the Max Planck Encyclopedia of International Procedural Law (MPEiPro) via Library Search or our Law Subject Guide using your Campus ID and password.
Once accessed, you can use the main menu to browse, select a subject area or locate an author who writes in your chosen field in the MPEPIL and MPEiPro. An overall search function, with basic and advanced searching, is also available.
Oxford University Press will give you a quick guided tour of the resource [7:22 mins]:
If you have an interest in PIL, international environmental law, peace, Treaties, human rights, refugees, use of force, space law, international criminal law or the law of the sea then this resource will be useful to you.
Your search results are in full-text format with cross-referencing within MPEPIL and MPEiPro, including links to external websites or case law. Results can be printed in PDF format, saved, emailed and shared. You can also sign up for current awareness alerts in relation to specific articles.
You can also expand your research with the Oxford Law Citator, linking to related content in relation to your topic of interest. This is useful to use in conjunction with the Personal Profile function where you can register as an individual user and save any results you find.
If you have any feedback on this resource, please leave a comment on this post or email our Law Liaison Librarian.
Update! Following trial access, we now have a subscription to this resource for 2020/21.
This Oxford University Press resource contains most of the essential, recommended and background reading titles you would normally find listed in your module handbooks and on the Law Library shelves. We have temporary access to OUP Law Trove to ensure our staff and students can study from home.
You can access OUP Law Trove directly via Library Search (log in with your Campus ID and password).
You can search by author, title, keyword, or narrow your search to those titles available to us alone by selecting Show titles in my subscription (left-hand menu). As of July 2020, there are 210 books.
You can further narrow your results by refining by subject using the options available in the left-hand menu.
If you prefer, you can take a tour of the resource before diving in.
If you have any feedback on this resource, please leave a comment or contact libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk.
World Scientific Publishing (WSP) is an academic publisher of scientific, technical, and medical books and journals with headquarters in Singapore. WSP publishes about 500 books annually as well as more than 150 journals in various fields. World Scientific eBooksare electronic versions of World Scientific print titles.
The titles span across a wide variety of subjects, including:
Asian studies
Business & Management
Chemistry
Computer Science
Economics & Finance
Engineering
Life sciences
Mathematics
Physics & Astronomy
Social Sciences
Once connected, you can search for titles within a specific subject:
Or for titles on a specific topic :
If you’re searching for titles directly through the World Scientific platform, look out for the “Full Access” symbol to make sure we have access to the full text content:
You can also search for individual titles on Library Search:
A user guide is available on the Library Subject Support guides and you can download from the link below:
We are pleased to announce we have trial access to Westlaw’s student textbooks, in addition to the standard Westlaw All Books collection we use on a daily basis.
The Sweet & Maxwell Academic collection gives access to an additional 19 titles to support studying at home during this pandemic. Titles include Winfield & Jolowicz on Tort, Treitel on the Law of Contract, Megarry & Wade on the Law of Real Property and Elliott & Wood’s Cases and Materials on Criminal Law, among others.
To access this content, log into Westlaw and click on Books in the menu at the top of the page.
If you know the book you are looking for, search by a title keyword, e.g. tort.
If you want to browse these student-focused books, use the filters on the left-hand side of the screen. Scroll down and select ‘Sweet & Maxwell Academic’.
We hope you find this additional access to Westlaw useful; please leave feedback or contact libraryhelp@ncl.ac.uk you want to get in touch. The temporary access ends on May 27th 2020.
SciFinder is a research discovery application that provides integrated access to the world’s most comprehensive and authoritative source of references, substances and reactions in chemistry and related sciences.
Accessible via Library Search this powerful, chemist-curated database from CAS offers reference, substance and reaction searching with sophisticated analysis tools. Substances can be searched by chemical structure, markush (for Patents), molecular formula, property or substance identifier. All alternative substance names are listed alongside CAS Registry numbers and commercial sources. Popular in industry, this database is vital for students and researchers in chemistry, pharmacy, forensic science, medicinal chemistry and chemical engineering.
To use SciFinder you must register and sign in when prompted. On doing so you can then set personal preferences, explore resources, and save your own searches. You can also browse your search history and set up alerts and notifications.
SciFinder Mobile allows you quick and easy access to references of published scientific research and information on substances of interest (including nomenclature, molecular formula and properties) from your smartphone.
If you’d like to know more or need a little help to get started CAS provide a range of online support and training. There are also a selection of instructional videos available on YouTube.
So get registered, sign in, and explore. You’ll be inputting structures using the drawing editor and conducting substructure searches in no time!
Institute of Physics Ebook collections offer high-quality research across physics and related disciplines. They have been created to meet the needs of students, early-career researchers and established leaders in the fields.
An additional 255 IOP ebooks covering subjects such as astronomy, particle and nuclear physics, medical physics and biophysics, quantum science and more have just been added to the Library’s collection.
If you find a title that we don’t have full-text access to and you would like us to add it to the collection, just use our Books on Time form available on the Library website to request it.
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) 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.
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.
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!
