New resource trial: Policy Commons additional modules

Policy Commons logo

The Library is currently trialling additional modules within the Policy Commons platform.

We have already successfully acquired the Global Think Tanks module, however the present trial also unlocks access to the following additional modules:

  • Public Health and Social Care: Frontline health providers, hospital systems, foundations, patient groups, practitioner communities, governments, think tanks, and other organizations produce research, pilot projects, real-world evaluations, newsletters, and collaborative projects.
  • North American City Reports: Cities are on the front lines addressing climate change, immigration, racial equity, and other pressing issues. North American City Reports is the best source of current, detailed information about what happened, what was tried, and what worked. Rich in statistics and hard evidence, the reports document attitudes, actions, and outcomes—through surveys, budgets, case studies, training manuals, plans, and other records.
  • World Cities and Local Governments: Cities are on the front lines of today’s most pressing challenges and their publications document the ground truth.
  • World Governments: Governmental organsations publish debates, proceedings, reports, budgets, commissions, inquiries, audits, scientific findings, and other content. They spend billions of dollars annually on research.
  • World Cities: Cities around the world are grappling with urgent issues that transcend national boundaries—rapid urbanization, escalating climate change, pervasive inequality, and other challenges. City reports show how municipalities are tackling problems. But lack of discoverability and impermanence make these the hardest policy documents to find and cite.
  • Oceania: A major new initiative to collect, preserve, and disseminate critical research from Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, Policy Commons: Oceania provides the region’s perspective on topics including climate change, indigenous rights, the economy, housing, healthcare, and ageing.

The resource is available to trial until Monday 31st March. Access Policy Commons from Library Search here.

As the purpose of a trial is provide short term institutional access to establish whether the resource is of interest for future sustained access, unfortunately we are not able to extend or repeat trials. Please bear in mind that any links to material within the trial collections will no longer work after the trial ends, so access is temporary.

We’re keen to hear any feedback on this resource, either by posting your thoughts on this blog post below, or by getting in touch with your Liaison Librarian at libliaison@newcastle.ac.uk.

New resource trial: AM digital collections (AM Explorer)

AM Explorer Arts and Humanities logo and text

The Library are currently hosting a trial to a range of digital primary source collections from from AM (Adam Matthews).

There’s a huge variety of collections that are available via the AM Explorer platform.

Access the AM Explorer platform here using your Newcastle University credentials, and then either keyword search the whole range of collections using the search bar on the homepage, or head to View Collections to browse the specific collections. Some collection highlights from AM Explorer include:

1980s Culture and Society

Amnesty International Archives

East India Company

India, Raj & Empire

Indigenous Histories and Cultures in North America

Popular Culture in Britain and America, 1950-1975

Poverty, Philanthropy and Social Conditions in Victorian Britain

 Travel Writing, Spectacle and World History

Women in The National Archives

The Search Guide provides support on how to best search the AM Explorer platform and collections.

The vast majority of the products are available to access via the AM Explorer platform, but some are available via direct links only:

The Olympic Movement: Sport, Global Politics and Identity

Mexico in History: Colonialism to Revolution

The Transformation of Shopping: Department Stores, Social Change and Consumerism 1830 – 1994

Women’s Voices and Life Writing, 1600-1968.

Our trial access is valid until 18th November 2024. As the purpose of a trial is provide short term institutional access to establish whether the resource is of interest for future sustained access, unfortunately we are not able to extend or repeat trials. Please bear in mind that any links to material within the trial collections will no longer work after the trial ends, so access is temporary.

We’re keen to hear any feedback on the specific collections, either by posting your thoughts on this blog post below, or by getting in touch with your Liaison Librarian at libliaison@newcastle.ac.uk.

New Resource Trial: MediaPlus

The Library is currently running a short trial to MediaPlus, a digital media resource offered by Alexander Street Press (ProQuest).

Alexander Street logo

MediaPlus consists of more than 100,000 videos, images, and sound recordings. The resource is ideal for students and researchers interested in 20th century British social, political and cultural history from a range of disciplines (particularly History, Media, and Politics).

You can use both the Search and Advanced Search functions to locate relevant sources. This video details how to make best use of the search functions in Alexander Street.

You can also browse by Title, Subject, and Sub-collection from the MediaPlus homepage, where you can then further refine results by date, publisher, or subject.

Content is drawn from a number of sources (Sub-collections):

  • Associated Press Archive (6,010 items)
  • Channel 4 News (6,508)
  • Gaumont British News (2,476)
  • Gaumont Graphic Newsreel (8,087)
  • Getty Moving images (8,163)
  • Getty Still images (11,732)
  • ITN (6,300)
  • ITV news (27,519)
  • Imperial War Museum – images (4,165)
  • Photographic Youth Music Culture Archive – PYMCA (6,421)
  • Reuters News (3,248)
  • Royal Geographical Society (6,448)
  • Royal Mail Film Classics (66)
  • The North Highland College – Johnston Collection (10,037)
  • Wellcome Library (710)

You can access MediaPlus via Library Search here.

The trial access to the resource is available until 15th November 2024. As the purpose of a trial is provide short term institutional access to establish whether the resource is of interest for future sustained access, unfortunately we are not able to extend or repeat trials.

Please note that MediaPlus content cannot be downloaded, and any embedded content or permalinks will not work after the trial ends.

We are keen to hear any feedback on this resource – please contact us by commenting below or by emailing your Liaison Librarian (libliaison@newcastle.ac.uk).

Global Communist and Socialist Movements

We are running a trial to this unique archive from Gale. It is a collection of first-hand narratives chronicling, socialist and far-left groups in terms of how figures saw themselves and the world around them during the major political and social events that occurred in the twentieth century.

The resource features primary sources from various different collections including:

Radical Left Political Movements and Social Issues: American Old Left
Source at the University of California, Davis

Senate House Library, University of London Collections

Rose Pastor Stokes Papers at Yale University

Anna Strunsky Walling Papers at Yale University

Papers of Walter Lippmann at Yale University

Alger Hiss Defense Collection at Harvard Law School Library

Alger Hiss Collection at New York University

Anti-Socialist Organisations in Britain at the British Library

FBI American Legion Contact Program at the Federal Bureau of Investigation

Archives of the Independent Labour Party

Socialist and Labour Thought in Britain Since 1884

FBI File on J. Robert Oppenheimer

Full details on the Gale website

There are approximately 868,000 pages made up of correspondence, periodicals, manuscripts, books, personal papers, organisational records, letters and newsletters, pamphlets dating from 1766-2004 (however most are dated between 1880-1950)

You can access this resource via Library Search. The trial will run until 18th April 2024.

We are keen to hear any feedback on this resource – please contact us by commenting below or by emailing your Liaison Librarian (libliaison@newcastle.ac.uk)

Books added to the Library by students in GPS (Semester One 2023/24)

Our Recommend a Book service for students allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Recommend a book.

In Semester One, academic year 2023/2024 we successfully processed 33 requests in GPS totalling just over £2206.

A Story of Ruins: presence and absence in Chinese art and visual culture
African Sexualities: A Reader
Against borders: the case for abolition
An Intelligent Person’s Guide to Liberalism
Architecting Systems. Concepts, Principles and Practice
Border abolitionism Migrants’ containment and the genealogies of struggles and rescue
Carbon Markets in a Climate-Changing Capitalism
Chihera in Zimbabwe: A Radical African Feminist Principle
Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom
Culturally Responsive Methodologies
Digital Health: Critical and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives
Dynamics of African feminism: The Defining and Classifying African Feminist Literatures
Emotionally Involved: The Impact of Researching Rape
Family matters: Feminist concepts in African philosophy of culture
Interrogating Heteronormativity in Primary Schools: The No Outsiders Project
Jacketed Women: Qualitative Research Methodologies on Sexualities and Gender in Africa
Lines in the Sand: The Cronulla Riots, Multiculturalism and National Belonging
Machinic Assemblages of Desire: Deleuze and Artistic Research 3
Monumental lies: culture wars and the truth about the past 
Nintendo: Playing with Power
On the boundary of two worlds Vol. 30:  (Forgotten Pages in Baltic History: Diversity and Inclusion)
Power, Violence and Justice: Reflections, Responses and Responsibilities
Queering Anarchism: Addressing and Undressing Power and Desire
Riga’s monuments and decorative sculptures 
Smashing Statues: The Rise and Fall of America’s Public Monuments
The image of the soldier in German culture 1871-1933
The law of force : the violent heart of Indian politics
The Marketisation of English Higher Education: A Policy Analysis of a Risk-Based System (Great Debates in Higher Education)
The Reconstruction of Berlin Palace: Facade, Architecture and Sculpture
The Routledge International Handbook of Sociology and Christianity
The Transformation of Strategic Affairs
The United States and China in the Era of Global Transformations
University in Chains: Confronting the Military-Industrial-Academic Complex

Books added to the Library by students in GPS (Semester Three 2022/23)

Our Recommend a Book service for students allows you to tell us about the books you need for your studies. If we don’t have the books you need, simply complete the web form and we’ll see if we can buy them. For books we already have in stock, if they are out on loan please make a reservation/hold request using Library Search.

Further information about Recommend a book.

In Semester Three, academic year 2022/2023 we successfully processed 12 requests in GPS totalling just over £1293

ACCA Strategic Business Leader (SBL) Study Text
Building a Normative Order in the South China Sea: Evolving Disputes, Expanding Options
Diversity and Inclusion in Environmentalism
Geopolitics and International Relations
Heterarchy in World Politics
Investing in Natural Capital: The Ecological Economics Approach to Sustainability
Managing Crisis
New Economies for Sustainability: Limits and Potentials for Possible Futures
Our Psychiatric Future: the politics of mental health
Strategic Narratives, Public Opinion and War
The Aesthetics of the Oppressed
We have never been middle-class

New Resource Trial: Gale Primary Sources – Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO)

Gale Primary Sources Nineteenth Century Collections Online logo
Gale Primary Sources Nineteenth Century Collections Online logo

The Library is pleased to confirm that we are currently hosting a trial to Nineteenth Century Collections Online (NCCO), a Gale Primary Sources resource.

NCCO is the result of partnerships between Gale and almost one hundred libraries to preserve and make digitally available content for academic research. NCCO unites multiple, distinct archives into a single resource of over one hundred types of primary source documents; it consists of monographs, newspapers, pamphlets, manuscripts, ephemera, maps, photographs, statistics, and other kinds of documents in both Western and non-Western languages.

The NCCO platform comprises 12 thematic collections, including:

  • Asia and the West: Diplomacy and Cultural Exchange
  • British Politics and Society
  • British Theatre, Music, and Literature: High and Popular Culture
  • Children’s Literature and Childhood
  •  European Literature, the Corvey Collection, 1790–1840 
  • Europe and Africa, Colonialism and Culture
  • Maps and Travel Literature 
  • Photography
  • Religion, Reform, and Society 
  • Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part I 
  • Science, Technology, and Medicine, Part II
  • Women and Transnational Networks 

The following video provides more information on one of the collections, as an example: British Politics and Society.

Newcastle University staff and students may login to the platform here.

The trial is live until Thursday 29th February 2024. If you need any support or assistance in using the platform them please do not hesitate to get in touch.

We are very keen to hear your feedback on this resource, so please do let us know by commenting below or by contacting us at libliaison@newcastle.ac.uk.

Policy Commons

After a successful trial in October 2023, we are delighted we have managed to secure a subscription to Policy Commons. We received some great feedback from academics about how the platform would fit in with teaching and learning in Schools including :

“This is an absolute treasure, especially for my research. I am also sure it will be an invaluable teaching resource for the environmental law module starting next semester.”

“There are huge amounts of so-called ‘grey’ policy literature that students working and being taught policy-oriented skills and modules cannot access because it is fragmented, hosted by various institutions and the organisations which commissioned such reports. Policy Commons makes the universe of policy-relevant literature, which is often the cutting edge of a field and more up-to-date than academic literature, accessible to students through just one easily searchable source. This is a highly recommended resource, which improves student skills, research and their written work”.

So if you aren’t familiar already, the database is one resource to locate publications from policy experts, NGO’s and think tanks. Publications include :
-The Council of Europe
-Environmental Law Institute
-European Parliamentary Research Service
-Center for Security Studies
-OECD
-World Bank Group
-United Nations
-International Institute for Environment and Development

This short video from Policy Commons tells you a little bit more

To access Policy Commons follow this link via Library Search

Resource trial – Policy Commons

We are trialling Policy Commons in October 2023. The database is a one stop shop to locate publications from leading policy experts, NGO’s and think tanks. Useful for students, staff and researchers across all disciplines it includes publications from across the globe including:
-The Council of Europe
-Environmental Law Institute
-European Parliamentary Research Service
-Center for Security Studies
-OECD
-World Bank Group
-United Nations
-International Institute for Environment and Development
To find out more see video below.

To access Policy Commons follow this link via Library Search

To send us your comments or feedback please add to this post or email us.

New modules added to our SAGE Research Methods collection

Following a successful trial of the resources in 2022-23, we have added two additional modules to our SAGE Research Methods collection. Through the Library you now have access to a host of guidance, worked examples, teaching resources and practice materials from SAGE Research Methods, SAGE Research Methods Video, SAGE Research Methods Datasets and SAGE Research Methods Data Visualisation.

Datasets

SAGE Research Methods Datasets is a collection of hundreds of teaching datasets and instructional guides that give you the chance to learn data analysis through hands-on practice.

This new resource is a bank of topical, practice datasets, indexed by method and data type. For academic staff, the datasets have been optimised for use in your teaching and can be used for in person teaching or within Canvas materials. This will save you the time of sourcing and cleaning data for use by you and your students.

The decisions researchers make when analysing data can be a mystery to students embarking on research for the first time. Through practicing analysis using real data from SAGE Research Methods Datasets, you can see how analytic decisions are made, helping you become confident researchers.

  • Quantitative datasets are taken from surveys and experiments and come with instructions to analyze the data in SPSS or R.
  • Qualitative datasets are taken from academic research projects, providing bite-size examples from interviews, focus groups, documentary sources, and more, plus advice on how to approach analysis.

You will find lots of guidance on how to get the most out of the datasets module on the SAGE Research Methods LibGuide.

Data Visualisation

SAGE Research Methods Data Visualisation will help all researchers, from beginners to more advanced practitioners develop the fundamentals of data and design necessary to create impactful visualisations. Through a series of practical video tutorials, text guides and practice datasets, the resources will help you identify the chart types that best fit your specific data story.

Researchers increasingly grapple with complex or big data and need to present their data in an understandable, easy to interpret, and informative way to disseminate their research successfully. Mastering the skills and techniques of data visualisation is, therefore, key for any researcher. This new resource will help you and your students to communicate data with impact so that audiences can grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns and relationships easily.

You are able to search and browse by data and chart type to find how to guides and explainer videos, explore a directory of data visualisation software and access datasets to help you practice communicating data.