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.
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.
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.”
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.
Hi! I’m Caitlin, a final year law student and law library
aide – and by now I’m used to the stress of exams and deadlines.
I tried the ‘poetry-pick me up’ after going into the common room for a revision break.
I stumbled across Sue (@kind_curious) in the Law School Student Common Room, where she asked, ‘do you want a poem?’. Not really knowing what to expect, I had to overcome a bit of social awkwardness! I was surprised by Sue’s passion and love of poetry, which was clear in the way she spoke about how she’d used poetry in the NHS before and it was what she enjoyed most.
I was asked questions about my current stress levels and how
I was feeling with exams, and how I dealt with stress. I told her that when I
get stressed I talk even more than usual, which for anyone who knows me sounds
like I’m going at a million miles an hour, and she suggested something that
would relax me.
I laughed as I saw no signs of chocolate or Netflix – my
usual go to relaxation strategies.
Instead she said I needed something like a lavender bubble
bath – again I saw no sign of a bubble bath in the Law School and I’d yet to
find one in the Dungeon.
She picked out two poems that would make me feel like the
relaxing in lavender: she suggested ‘Sonnet’ by Elizabeth Bishop and Shennagh
Pugh’s ‘What if This Road’.
What if this road reminded me of Robert Frost’s ‘A Road Not Taken’,
and was great for me as a an indecisive person. It was matched perfectly to the
questions that Sue had asked me, as I read it as a ‘roll with it’ approach to life, which is
definitely needed to cope with exams and deadline stress.
The second poem, Bishop’s ‘Sonnet’, had great visualisation
techniques, almost like a meditative poem – which was spot on to turn off the
stress and slow everything down!
The experience was a great switch off from deadline stress,
and a great use of the 10 minutes which I’d usually scroll through twitter or
Instagram. It was something different, and really quite unique and relaxing,
which I would definitely recommend to help have a break from any exam and
deadline stress!
Historic Digimap is an online map and data delivery service, available to all staff and students of Newcastle University. It delivers access to historical Ordnance Survey maps of Great Britain dating from 1846-1996 across various scales, including 1:25,000 and 1:10,650.
If you are a first time user of Digimap then you will need to complete a brief registration form and agree to the license agreements for each collection, but that takes seconds and then you’re ready to go!
Viewing historic maps (3:36 min)
If you want to ‘roam’ through the ages in an area, then you can use the timeline tool to see how the landscape has developed through the years, or view two maps side-by-side to compare and contrast your findings. Imagine looking at the Newcastle University Campus and seeing what used to be on the site before buildings such as the Henry Daysh Building, Stephenson Building and Philip Robinson Library graced us with their facilities!
Once you have your area of interest, the Roam service will allow you to view, annotate and print the map in PDF format. Data Download will allow you to download OS data for use in GIS/CAD (if you wish!).
The full scope of what Historic Digimap (and the other collections available to you including Ordnance Survey, Geology, Marine, Environment, Aerial, Lidar and Improvement Service) are covered in EDINA’s comprehensive Help service:
(Improvement Services is an organisation dedicated to the improvement of local government services in Scotland. This data collection comprises of 37 local authority datasets, such as planning applications, green belts and school catchment areas. A wealth of information, who’d have thought.)
Go on, give it a try! But please do read EDINA’s Digimap FAQs on what you are permitted to do with the data you use, to ensure you comply with the educational use licence.
The archive brings you the full content of this world-renowned weekly literary and arts publication, dating back to its first issue. For over a century, the TLS has published reviews, features, debates and original works from across the arts world, not to mention its legendary letters page!
Many of the world’s most notable writers and thinkers have contributed to the TLS over the decades, including T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Seamus Heaney, Noam Chomsky, Virginia Woolf, Bertolt Brecht and Umberto Eco. Until 1974, contributions published in the TLS were often anonymous, but the digital archive now reveals the identity of all contributors.
To find out more about the TLS, click Research Tools to read a selection of essays about different periods of its history.
You can browse the TLS by date to find a specific issue, or search in various ways (choose Advanced Search to see all options, including searching by contributor, book title, or document type.)
Additional search features on the home page include Term Frequency, to trace how often a word, phrase or person has featured in the TLS over the years, and Topic Finder, to explore and visualise connections between topics.
Topic finder
As the TLS archive is published by the company Gale, you can cross-search it with any of the other Gale archives to which we have access, via Gale Primary Sources.
Brill’s Jacoby Online is an important resource for Classical Studies and Ancient History. It comprises five separate works, based on the original multi-volume work by the German classicist, Felix Jacoby (1876-1959). The ‘Jacoby’ was a critical edition of over 800 Greek historians whose works had been lost, but were preserved incompletely in fragments. Jacoby collected, annotated and commented on the fragments, but was unable to complete the huge project in his lifetime.
The five components of Jacoby Online are:
Felix Jacoby’s original multi-volume work, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker: Parts I-III.
Brill’s New Jacoby (BNJ): a revised English edition of the above.
Brill’s New Jacoby – Second Edition (BNJ2): a revised and enlarged edition of Brill’s New Jacoby.
Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part IV: Biography and Antiquarian Literature: a continuation of Felix Jacoby’s work, adding many new historians and texts.
Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker Part V: Geography (FGrH V), a continuation of Felix Jacoby’s work, adding many new historians and texts.
It includes expert critical commentaries on the texts and fragments, together with brief biographies of all the historians. The project is still ongoing, and Jacoby Online is updated twice a year: the latest updates have added 1.2 million words.
Example entry from Jacoby Online
You can browse each of the five component works by historian name, historian number or publication date, and you can search for words or phrases, or historians. You can search any of the five component works individually, or across all of them at once. Greek original texts and translations are included, and you can search in English or Ancient Greek.
It is possible to check live study space availability online or by using the university app. This will allow you to head straight for the nearest available study space and therefore avoid wasting valuable time searching for a desk.
You can also book a group study room or booth online for a maximum of 120 minutes per day. This will allow you to get together with fellow students to plan and allocate some guaranteed study time prior to your next exam.
Study Well@NCL, which runs throughout the exam period, advocates a responsible approach to studying and encourages positive behaviours in study spaces. Remember, it is key to choose the right environment that meets your study needs, to stay hydrated, and to respect the students and study space around you.
Thinking about study space in advance can help to remove a lot of unwanted stress and thus free up valuable energy that will aid both your revision focus and exam preparation.
How did social networking operate before the internet? Explore Electronic Enlightenment to find out!
Electronic Enlightenment is a valuable resource for anybody studying or researching the long eighteenth century. It is an archive of digitised correspondence, comprising nearly 80,000 letters sent between 10,000 individuals, written from the 17th to mid 19th centuries. Its geographic scope covers Europe, the Americas and Asia, and it encompasses a cross-section of society, including philosophers, scholars, shopkeepers, servants and diplomats.
The letters are supplemented with contextual information, including annotations and biographical notes, plus teaching aids such as lesson plans and discussion ideas (choose about ee on the home page). Annual updates ensure the content keeps growing.
You can search or browse Electronic Enlightenment in various ways (e.g. by name, occupation, date or place).
Want to learn more? Choose take a guided tour from the home page to get an overview of content and how to search/browse.
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.
