Current awareness and saving a search that works!
Did you know you can set up alerts to receive emails when new issues of journals of interest to you are published, or that you can save a Library Search that has worked so...
Category: Help guides-offcampus
Finding book chapters on your topic
Sometimes you might do a search for books on your topic on the Library Search and not find very many - this can happen when you have narrowed down a topic quite a lot....
Using Zotero to help organise your reading and cite papers
Did you know that there are tools that you can use to help you manage the resources you are reading and can also assist with referencing in your assignments? One free tool that we...
Cite Them Right Online update
Cite Them Right relaunched their service on 27th June! The same great information about how to reference all types of information is still available but the site does look quite a bit different now....
5 steps to a successful literature search
When you’re searching for information for your studies it is best to devise a search strategy. Follow these 5 steps to building your search: Before you start your search - make a plan! Identify...
Finding open access academic research (without needing to log in)
*This post has been edited following the resolution of IT issues that the University experienced in October 2021.* Next week is Open Access Week all over the world, but at University of Sunderland we're...
Changes to British Standards Online document security
British Standards Online have recently added an extra layer of security to their documents. Please refer to the BSi website for full details or, read on for the summarised version. BSi documents are now...
ScholarCheck Citation Tool on HeinOnline
Remember our blog post on citation trails? The post demonstrated how to use backward and forward techniques to find more material on your search topic. In addition these techniques are useful for checking the...
Hints and tips on using ebooks
How are you getting on with using the Library ebooks? Check out all the new books we have bought recently for the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries. Many of these are in arts, design...
Accessibility for All
At last week’s Module/Programme Studies Board for Childhood Studies I received a request to promote the accessibility tools I have written about this year to reach all of you studying Social Sciences. To kick...
The Wayback Machine: a free tool for fact checking and internet research
How many times have you clicked on a link or reference, only to get the message that the webpage no longer exists? This phenomenon, which is called ‘link rot‘ or ‘content drift‘ can be...
Market Research Guide
You might need to use market research for an essay or assignment, to prepare for an interview, or later in your career to prepare a social media campaign or to expand a business into...
Give your eyes a break, and listen to your reading instead
After doing most everything – socializing, lectures, essays, projects, entertainment – on the screen, could your eyes use a break? I’m going to suggest two methods for listening to your academic reading with a...
Help with Referencing – Look at cite them right
Not sure where to go to get help with referencing? Cite Them Right is an excellent online tool to help you reference your assignments. In Education and Languages courses, you will often go beyond...
How to use Newsstream for newspaper research
There are many reasons you might need to do research in a newspaper archive. You might be interested in how an event was reported in London vs Glasgow vs New York. You might be...