Studying Online

As teaching has now gone online and you are likely to be studying at home now is the time to make the most of our online resources.

eBooks
If you’re new to using eBooks you’ll find most of your My Module Resources reading lists will have eBooks listed. You can easily find them by looking for the letter ‘e’ by the side of the book cover or by the laptop image to the right of the title:

If they’ve been tagged as eBooks by your lecturer then you can use the filter feature on the toolbar to sift out the eBooks. It  looks like an ice cream cone below:

Our handy guide explains how to find eBooks on the library catalogue and read them online/download them. Or let our video take you through it step by step.

When you’re using a Dawsonera eBook then their Tutorial videos are useful for learning how to copy text, print pages, save items to your Bookshelf or download the eBook to a device. If you’re reading a ProQuest Ebook Central eBook then their Libguide takes you through using highlighters, notes and bookmarks on the Annotations tab, how to download a chapter or the eBook and how to use the Bookshelf (each one on a separate tab of the Libguide). You’ll find videos on there too.

eJournals
Articles in journals are published much more quickly than books and are usually peer reviewed by a panel of experts before they are published. This gives them added gravitas to help you attain higher grades in your assignments by demonstrating you are using a range of material from academic sources. Again we have an essential guide to finding articles on Library Search (formerly known as Discover) or a video which you can watch and pause as you practise searching at the same time.

For those of you who’ve already been using ejournals then it’s worth referring to our Tips and Tricks for Advanced Searches guide which gives you a toolkit of techniques like phrase searching which you can use to make your search results more precise and comprehensive.  In any skill session we teach we also emphasise the value of taking time out first to identify keywords and similar words to describe your topic using a mind map as well as themes and key authors/organisations. You can create a mind map on paper or online eg MindMup. Once you’ve done that then you can use the mind map to build a search string which adds all of these elements together using the phrase, and/or truncation (the stem of a word ie teen* with an asterisk to capture all the words that start with the same four letters) and/or wildcard (where you cover different spellings of words eg organi?e) with Boolean elements (and, or, not).

If you already know the details of the article you want including which journal title it’s in you can shortcut by doing a full library search to just searching by the journal title.This is also a useful step to take if you find the number of library results on Library Search overwhelming or you just want to test out your keywords on a journal you know well. If you’re struggling to think of a key journal in your study area then take a look at our Key Resources in Social Sciences subject lists. This guide explains how to do it.

Study Skills Guides
If you need help with referencing, critical thinking or writing – whether you are doing an assignment or your dissertation – then take a look at our Study Skills Guides.

If you need any help you can ask on chat through Library Talk, take part in an online Drop-in or book an online 1:1 using our request form.