With the high volume of information available to you online when you begin your research, it can be difficult to know which of the sources you find to actually use in your assignments or essays. Ultimately, you’ll want to choose the information that is of good quality and that can help you to answer your research questions most effectively. This means you need to make some critical decisions about the information you have found. Even if the materials you find are from reliable sources, such as Library Search or a Subject Database like Scopus you’ll need to consider how the information you’ve found compares to other information and if it is suitable for your purposes.
To help you make effective critical decisions you’ll need to think about these key areas:
Currency – is the information up-to-date?
Relevance – does it help you answer your research question?
Authority – who wrote it? How qualified are the authors?
Accuracy – how did the authors of the information reach their conclusions? What evidence and data have they used?
Purpose – Why was it written?
The video below looks at these in more detail:
See the Academic Skills Kit for more advice on selecting suitable information for your assignments and for more on the ins and outs of critical thinking take a look at this great blog from the Writing Development Centre: Shopping Around for a Critical Opinion
One of my good friends is the middle child of three siblings – born between two siblings with strong identities of “the eldest” and “the youngest”- and feels that she gets “forgotten about” or “neglected” by her parents (but of course she never is).
You could compare second year at University to feeling like the second child – not as exciting and ‘new’ as the youngest new-born (first year) nor as distinguished and knowledgeable as the eldest (final year at University) – but definitely never to be forgotten about.
Research conducted by Liverpool John Moores University found that second year students can suffer from ‘underperformance and withdrawal’ (Thompson et al., 2013) and that ‘around a third of undergraduates experienced a slow down in their academic progress during second year’ (Milsom, 2015). So don’t worry if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed and disengaged as you enter your second year of studies, you are definitely not alone.
So how can you get out of your slump?
The research by Liverpool John Moores University highlight the importance of recognising the challenges faced by second year students and identify support that can help you rise to meet them (Thompson et al., 2013).
The Library have definitely not forgotten about our much loved second years, and we’ve been thinking about how we can help – here are our top three ways that the Library and our resources can support you during your second year and how you can hopefully kick-start your engagement with the Library and your studies…
1. Find inspiration
As a second year, you may often feel disengaged, so take some time to remember what you love about you subject; explore your reading lists and Subject Guide(s) to find some wider reading on your favourite topics in your subject area – this may help you build your subject knowledge, help you think about what you want to focus on in third year and remind you why you chose this subject in the start.
The reading lists for your modules is an excellent places to start any refresh. Watch this short video (2:44min) on how to find and use your reading lists:
Another place to re-engage with your subject is our Subject Guides. These guides are created by our ingenious Librarians (*ahem) and are collections of subject specific resources to help you discover reliable and authoritative information for your studies. Remember, if your studies are interdisciplinary, you might have to use multiple guides to ensure find relevant resources.
2. Refresh and build on your skills
Second year is a great time to take some time to refresh or build on your information and academic skills, so you are prepared for your studies becoming more challenging and intense as the year progresses and then transitioning into third year.
Boost your motivation this year by setting yourself small and achievable goals. These could be to improve a mark from last year, to read more widely or to refresh a skill that would be useful for employment. Our Skills Checker is an excellent tool to help you identify an area of information skills to work on.
Once you have identified the areas to work on, check out the Academic Skills Kite for help and has advice on developing your academic skills. It is your guide to where you can go for support on all aspects of your academic life. With online resources to help you with your academic and study skills, covering topics such as academic integrity and referencing, exams and revisions, learning online and academic writing, you will find the support you need to study successfully.
Also discover our Resource and Subject Guides for help on finding, evaluating and managing information and useful guides on subject such as how to use EndNote, how to create an academic poster or how to identify fake news.
Our Employability Guide is another superb guide to show how developing your information and digital literacy skills can help prepare you for your future careers, and don’t forget, Newcastle University’s award-winning Careers Service provide expert advice regarding your future plans.
3. Ask for help
The Library is always here to help, so contact us by email, chat, phone or by social media 24/7 to ask any question regarding the Library services and resources.
The Library Liaison team and the Academic Skill Team are also available to meet (via Teams) for a one-to-one appointment to help you on any aspect of Library and academic skills that you need help with. You can book an appointment via Library Help.
I hope we have reassured you that you lovely second years are definitely not forgotten and that we are here to help you on your academic journey every step of the way (*oh so cheesy). These are difficult times but with a bit of grit and determination we have confidence that you will succeed in every way.
Referencing is an important part of academic writing –
you’ll usually find it included in the marking criteria for your assignments
and projects, with marks being awarded for correctly formatted citations and
reference lists.
Why is referencing important?
It acknowledges the ideas and contributions of
others that you have drawn upon in your work, ensuring that you avoid
plagiarism
It highlights the range of reading you’ve done
for your assignment and makes your own contribution clear, showing how you’ve
taken ideas from others and built upon them
It enables the person reading your work to
follow up on your references so they can learn more about the ideas you’ve
discussed in your work or check any facts and figures.
How does referencing work?
Are there any tools that can help?
Yes! There are lots of referencing tools that can help you manage and format your citations and references correctly. Here are some examples:
A very useful online tool that lists all the information you need to include in a reference and provides examples of how a reference will look as an in-text citation and in a reference list. See our ‘Level Up Your Referencing: Cite Them Right’ blog for more information.
Citation Buttons
Keep an eye out for this symbol on Library
Search and Google Scholar. Clicking the
button will provide the option for you to copy a reference in a particular
style and paste it directly into your reference list. You might need to tidy it up a little bit but
it will save you time over writing them manually.
Reference building tools help you
to create a bibliography using the correct referencing style. You can input information manually or use
import functions to pull information through from other webpages or documents. As with the citation button above, reference
building tools can save you time but you may still need to check the references
are accurate.
Reference Management Software: e.g. EndNote
If you’re writing a detailed essay, dissertation or thesis, you may like to use a reference management tool such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero to help keep all of your references organised. This software allows you to manually add references or import them from Library Search, Google Scholar or Subject Databases; sort references into groups; attach pdf documents or add notes. You can then use the reference management software while you write to add in-text citations and format your reference list.
The University has a subscription for EndNote which is available in all University clusters and can be downloaded to your own personal device. You’ll find information about how to get started with EndNote on our EndNote Guide.
Remember: whatever tool you use, it’s always a good idea to get to know the conventions of the referencing style your school or lecturer would like you to use so that you can spot mistakes or missing information.
You can find out more about referencing and plagiarism by following this tutorial from Cite Them Right (You’ll need to log in to the institutional log in with your University username and password.)
The guides group together all the main library subscriptions we have for that specific type of information, as well as linking out to key external links and resources too. Wherever possible we also include guidance and help on how to get the best out of the databases and links and group the information together into a logical and helpful way. We know how busy life is and we simply want to save you time!
So what you are waiting for, go and check out our fabulously named Resource Guides, because they do exactly what they say on the tin!
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.
First put on display over 100 years ago, Dippy is a cast of a Diplodocus dinosaur and measures a massive 21.3 metres long – he was an incredible sight to see!
Dippy, who belongs to the Natural History museum, is currently touring the country and will be in Newcastle for this special exhibition until Sunday 6 October 2019. You can find out more about Dippy and book tickets here.
Alongside the brilliant Dippy, the exhibition at the Great North Museum also features a spectacular visual timeline that emphasises the significance of climate change. Beginning in the time of the dinosaurs and highlighting the climate change brought about by the meteor that killed the species, it continues up through the industrial revolution to the climate emergency of today.
The display spotlights academics and teams from Newcastle University who are researching important climate change related issues. You can find out more about the work of these researchers below:
Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory collects real-time urban data from across the Tyne and Wear area. With over 50 data types available, including air quality, traffic, sewage and noise levels, it provides the largest set of publicly available real time urban data in the UK.
What comes into your head, when someone says ‘maps’? I think we often presume that if we aren’t studying geography, earth sciences, archaeology or architecture for instance then they aren’t for us. But think again! Maps can be applied to a variety of different ways in research and we have put together a Maps Resource Guide to explain what resources we have and potentially how they can be used.
The Maps Guide outlines the different ways you can access both physical and online maps and gives you an overview of how you can use our online Digimap ROAM subscription. With this tool, you can not only get up-to-date OS Maps, but also historic maps which can help track both infrastructure development, as well as social and environmental changes too. And if you want to directly compare different-aged maps against each other, Digimap lets you toggle between the two on your screen.
Thematic mapsand a database of case studies to see how Digimaps have been applied to research can also be found on the Maps Guide. Here is just a taster to whet your appetite:
Mapping the victims of Jack the Ripper using Historic Roam
Conducting a national fox survey using Environment Roam
Studying garden history and landscape in the 18th Century
Designing housing in Byker for an Artists in Residence project.
So…..before you rule out maps as not relevant for your research, why not take a minute and have a look at our Maps Guide to see if there is potentially something for you!
N.B. If you’re wanting to be the next Sherlock, just remember you need to plan your investigations in advance and register with Digimap at least 24 hours before you need to start using the resource.
The Liaison team visited the wonderful Dippy the Dinosaur at the 
