Tag: English Literature

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Exams: we are here to help

Woman throwing books up in the air

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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!
  3. Study Space – The University Library has a range of different study rooms and spaces to suit your needs.
  4. 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.
  5. Subject guides – we have a range of subject guides put together by expert librarians which draw together all the main resources for your studies.
  6. Be well@NCL collection – we don’t just have books for study. This new collection includes tried and tested books that support your wellbeing.
  7. Additional support – don’t suffer and please don’t be shy. You can seek additional support from your NUSU, Student Wellbeing Service, Nightline and the University chaplaincy.

So remember……pace yourself, access the help you need and believe that you can do this!

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Drama Online: what’s new?

Photo of a theatre
Image by David Mark from Pixabay

The Library has subscribed to Drama Online for several years.  This resource contains the text of over 2,200 international plays, from ancient to contemporary, together with contextual resources. It’s likely to be of interest to anyone studying literature, languages (ancient to modern), film studies and media.

We’ve recently upgraded our subscription to include the 2018/19 top-ups of the Nick Hern Books collection and the Core Collection (featuring plays published by Bloomsbury and Faber), giving us access to an additional 150 plays.

All the plays are individually catalogued and searchable via Library Search, or you can search/browse them all in various ways on the Drama Online site.

For example, using the options at the top of the screen, you can browse by title, author, genre and time period, or if you click Find Plays on the home page, you can add in other search filters, such as number of roles or scenes. Select Context and Criticism for access to a wide range of e-books about drama.

When viewing a play text, click Play Tools to analyse the speaking parts and appearances of different characters throughout the play.

Finally, follow @dramaonlinelib for news and features about this fantastic resource!

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New resource: Irish Newspaper Archives

Following a successful trial, the Library now has access to the Irish Newspaper Archives: a fascinating resource for any aspect of Irish studies.

It provides access to the archives of national and local Irish newspapers from the 1700s to the present day. Major national titles such as the Irish Examiner, Irish Independent and Sunday Independent are included, together with a wide range of regional titles, such as the Meath Chronicle, Kerryman, Connacht Tribune and Ulster Herald.

The archive is updated daily with the latest editions of current titles, and it also includes significant newspapers which are no longer published, such as the Freeman’s Journal and The Nation.

Title pages of Irish newspapers
A selection of title pages from the archive.

You can search and refine your results in various ways, or choose browse to look through individual newspapers by date. Various save and export options are available, and there are some short help videos on the archive’s home page to give you some tips (note, these don’t have sound). Follow Irish News on Twitter for interesting highlights from the archive.

Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback on the trial.

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Music is forever…

Rock's Backpages logo.

Overdosed on Christmas carols? Or want to know more about the voices behind that ‘Fairytale of New York’ song you’ve heard so much during the last few weeks!? You need Rock’s Backpages.

Rock’s Backpages is an online library of music journalism: 40,000 classic articles and 600 audio interviews pop’s finest writers, spanning over 60 years across all pop genres.

You can read articles on Slade, Bjork, Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Ed Sheeran, Stormzy, our own Maximo Park, Queen, Lamb of God, 50 Cent or 5 Seconds of Summer. Perhaps you are researching jazz, country or folk? There’s something here for you.

Access the Library to easily browse by artist, genre or publication:

An image of the Rock's Backpages Library search screen.

Follow @rocksbackpages on Twitter for news of recently released articles or features on artists and their music, listen to the weekly podcast which highlights the latest additions or sign up to receive their newsletter.

An image of a guitar pick.
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Historic newspaper archives upgrade

If you use any of our historic newspaper and periodical archives which are published by Gale, you’ll notice they have recently upgraded their platform.

There is no change to the content, but you should notice a more unified design on the search pages, together with improvements to the display of search results, plus new search tools, including ‘topic finder’ and ‘more like this’. You can also use ‘term frequency’ on all Gale databases to analyse the use of a particular term over time.

The following collections are affected:

British Library Newspapers; Burney Newspapers; Eighteenth Century Collections Online; Nineteenth Century UK Periodicals.

Together with these individual archives:

Picture Post; Punch; The Daily Mail; The Economist; The Financial Times; The Independent; The Listener; The Sunday Times; The Telegraph; The Times; The Times Literary Supplement.

Read more about the improvements.

Where can I find all these resources?

They are all individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can find quick links to them all (plus resources from other publishers) on our historic news guide. If you would like to search across several Gale resources at once, search Gale Primary Sources.

Where can I get more advice about searching historic newspapers online?

Watch our short video for lots of helpful tips.

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2020 Reading Challenge

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.

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Early English Books Online update

Early English Books Online (EEBO) has moved to an enhanced platform on Proquest.

The content remains the same, but you should note various improvements to the interface. Key changes include:

  • Additional search and filter options.
  • The new platform adapts fully to all devices, including phones and tablets.
  • Improved viewing of results, with larger thumbnails and images.
  • Text Creation Partnership transcriptions are now included.
  • Improved export and personalisation options.
  • You can now cross-search EEBO with other Proquest content, such as Early European Books.

You will still be able to access the old EEBO platform until the end of June 2020, but we would encourage you to familiarise yourselves with the new platform as soon as possible.

Find out more about the new platform, together with further enhancements planned for early 2020, on the Proquest EEBO site or for more detail, visit the EEBO lib guide.

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A quick guide to finding the best study space for you

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.

Image of silent, quiet, collaborative and bookable study spaces

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.

  • Image of social space

So if you need a change of scenery, go and take a look and find a space that’s just right for you.

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Waltzing with EndNote

What is EndNote?

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.

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Strictly Referencing: When is a website not a website?

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.