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.

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.

New resource: Westlaw Edge UK

Westlaw Edge UK. Is this a new resource? Possibly not by definition, but it is most certainly a significant enhancement within the existing Westlaw UK service.

Westlaw Edge UK (not to be confused with the Microsoft Edge browser) is available via the Law Subject Guide and Library Search within Westlaw UK. Once logged in with your Newcastle University Campus ID and password you will find the tools available to help you keep currently aware and able to anticipate change – skills which are incredibly important to develop as a law student to be carried into your legal career.

These tools include:

An image showing the Westlaw Edge UK tools to enable current awareness.

With inclusion of an interactive precedent map within Case Analytics to easily locate relevant cases…

An image of the precedent map associated with Donoghue v Stevenson (snail in a bottle case).

…and the UK-EU Divergence Tracker to assist with analysing the legal implications of Brexit, it’s even easier to carry out effective and efficient legal research.

You can go beyond search results lists with AI-suggested relevant research and resources tailored to your needs. Skynet hasn’t got a look in. Go on, don’t be slow. Lose yourself in Westlaw Edge UK and get ahead.

A photo of a snail in a glass bottle. Photo by Rodion Kutsaev on Unsplash.

Make the most out of your library’s resources

Image link to the library's Academic Skills page.
https://www.ncl.ac.uk/library/resources-and-study-support/subject-guides/

Key resources

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:

Image of the navigation menu displayed in subject guides. It contains a home page, books and e-books, resources for online learning, journals and databases, subject specific resources, special collections and archives, subject help and news.

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:

Image displaying the contents of the middle tab in the Journals and Databases section. It contains a list of PDF workbooks with instructions to databases.

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.

Academic skills

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:

Image link to the Subject support page displaying the links to guides for the three faculties and Academic Skills.

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.

Library Help

Do you have any specific questions? Please contact us via Library Help where we monitor your live chats and emails or have a look through our FAQs.

New Resource: Max Planck Encyclopedias of Public International Law

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.

An image of the MPIL homepage.

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.

An image of a result within MPEPIL.

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.

New Resource: OUP Law Trove

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.

An image of the OUP Law Trove sign-in page.

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.

New resource: Oxford Handbooks Online

The Library has bought permanent access to several collections in the Oxford Handbooks Online series.

This provides access to 250 handbooks in various subject areas across humanities, social sciences and science, in addition to collections we had previously bought. The new collections are:

You can access the content in various ways: for example, you can browse by the broad subject areas, to view individual books, and/or the articles within those books.

Once in a subject area, you can then refine your search to more specific sub-disciplines.

You can also search in various ways, e.g. by author or keyword.

The handbooks are all being individually catalogued and will be accessible via Library Search shortly.

New ebook collections: Taylor and Francis

The Library has access to several new ebook collections from Taylor and Francis until March 2021.

The collections comprise over 1,200 titles in a wide range of subject areas across humanities, social sciences, science, technology and medicine.

Search filter box

All the books are individually catalogued on Library Search, or you can browse them on the Taylor and Francis site (click Show content I have access to in the search filter box to display the titles available to you).

After March 2021, we will assess usage of the titles.

Resource on trial: Westlaw student textbooks

Westlaw logo.

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.

An image of the Westlaw home screen with the Books option highlighted.

If you know the book you are looking for, search by a title keyword, e.g. tort.

An image of the Westlaw Books screen with Search highlighted.

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.

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.