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Dissertation Week

This week (9th-13th Feb) we have a series of lunchtime and afternoon sessions designed to help students who are about to start their dissertations, although anyone can attend, so it doesn’t matter whether you’re a first year undergraduate student or a postgraduate. There’s no need to sign up in advance; just come along to the session you’re interested in.

Each session is 45 minutes long but packed with content. They are designed and run by subject librarians. See the timetable below:

Searching for information

For advanced tips for searching the library catalogue, effective database searching and searching alternative formats.

Monday 9th Feb, Wednesday 11th Feb, Friday 13th Feb (1-1.45pm, Prokofiev Room, 2nd floor)

Referencing with Zotero

An introduction to Zotero (free, open source online referencing software). Bring a laptop if you can!

Tuesday 10th Feb, Thursday 12th Feb (1-1.45pm, Prokofiev Room, 2nd floor)

Finding Special Collections and Archives

What are Special Collections? How to find the collections and archives you need.

Tuesday 10th Feb (2.30-3.15pm, Special Collections and Archives, ground floor)

Using other libraries

Goldsmiths students are eligible to use other libraries in London and the UK. Find out how.

Wednesday 11th Feb (2.30-3.15pm. Prokofiev Room, 2nd floor)

Using Special Collections and Archives

How can these contribute to your research? This is a hands-on workshop with items from our collections.

Thursday 12th Feb (2.30-3.15pm, Special Collections and Archives, ground floor)

Reading Lists

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Do you know about the Goldsmiths’ online Reading Lists System? The online Reading Lists System was launched in September 2014. Currently we have around 300 reading lists available online. The system website is http://readinglists.gold.ac.uk and it can also be accessed via learn.gold, the library catalogue and the library web pages.

The online Reading Lists System enables students to access their reading lists online. It shows the real-time availability of items in the library; as well as linking directly to online resources such as e-books, journal articles, audiovisual items such as DVDs, blogs and even Youtube clips etc. It provides simple access to course reading materials, and students can easily identify essential readings, recommending readings materials for each topic/week/course.

Students can add notes to each item or add their reading intention to a list as well as create their own reading lists once they’ve signed in using their campus username/password. Further information and guidelines for the system can be found at http://www.gold.ac.uk/media/Student%20Quick%20Guide.pdf

If you don’t find a list on the system for your course, it is possible that your lecturer has not set one up; ask them in the first instance. Not all lecturers will choose to place their lists here.

E-Resource of the Month – Drama Online

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What is Drama Online?

Drama Online is an award winning collection of resources for Theatre and Performance and English and Comparative Literatre students. It provides online access to the finest drama texts, from Aeschylus to Polly Stenham. Drama Online also provides guidance, including scholarly notes, annotated texts, critical analysis and contextual information, including detailed encyclopedias, biographies of key people and critical works on major playwrights. Production stills are also provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum, shedding light on changes in scenography, costume design and performance styles.

How do I access Drama Online?

Go to the E-Resources A-Z list and click on ‘D’. Click on the G icon if you’re on-campus and click on the W icon if you’re off-campus. You’ll then be taken to the Drama Online homepage. There are sign in options in the top right corner of the screen. Use your Campus log-in if requested.

Searching Drama Online

Once logged in, there is a main search bar at the top of the screen. For instance, a search for George Bernard Shaw provides approximately 94 results. These can be sorted or filtered however you wish. Click on an entry to access the full text. You can also use the Advanced Search from the top of the screen to make a more specific search, e.g. enter search terms and search within type, playwrights and practitioners, genre, period, theme and setting. There are also browse options from the top of the main homepage. You can browse by play, playwrights and practitioners, genre, period, context and criticism, and theatre craft.

E-Resource of the Month – Dawsonera

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What is Dawsonera?

Dawsonera is the largest supplier of electronic books to academic libraries. It is part of the same company that provides our print books – Dawson Books. Dawson works with the world’s leading publishers to ensure that Dawsonera provides the richest and most diverse collections of electronic books available. Over 300,000 books are available for purchase or rental. Dawsonera ebooks are designed to be made available to users however they want it – whether it’s a quick preview, reading it in your browser, or downloading it if you plan to refer to it often. Books our library doesn’t own can be rented, and it’s often much easier than trying to locate an inter-library loan copy. Ebooks are also a great way of ensuring books can be spread around – no need to wait for print copies to be returned! Dawsonera ebooks are also available on numerous devices. Dawsonera has upgraded recently, so this is an overview of what’s changed and what’s remained intact.

How do I access Dawsonera?

Dawsonera can be accessed directly at its website or it can be accessed via our e-resources pages. Click on ‘D’ and find Dawsonera ebooks. Click on ‘sign in’ in the top right corner, and choose Shibboleth login. Choose ‘Goldsmiths’ from the list of subscribing universities, and then enter your campus username and password, e.g. jsmit010. This form of login applies whether you’re accessing it on campus or off. All Dawsonera ebooks we own are also available via the library catalogue. On the results page, click on ‘electronic book [click here to access]’ and follow the link in the record to take you to Dawsonera.

Searching Dawsonera

Once signed in, you’ll be directed to the Dawsonera homepage. You’ll be shown the most read books by Goldsmiths and also ‘recently added’ (added to Dawsonera itself, not Goldsmiths’ collections). In the right column, you’ll see your own Dawsonera activity, including books you’ve saved to your bookshelf and your recently viewed books. These are handy if you plan to return to books you’re reading. You can browse by clicking ‘ebook catalogue’. If you ensure that ‘show unowned content’ is unticked, you’ll only see the books Goldsmiths owns. You can change the year of publication (you might wish to see 2014 books only) and you can choose specific categories (e.g. subjects) to browse within.

The search bar at the top of the page allows you to search by author, title, keyword, etc. If you use this search, be as thorough as possible, including title and author if you know it. The advanced search allows you to be even more specific, including searching by ISBN if you know it.

When you find a book we own, you’ll see two icons – the first allows you to download for 1-3 days. It will be saved as a PDF in your documents folder, titled by its ISBN. The PDF will no longer be available once the time you requested it for lapses. The read online option allows you to open the book there and then in your browser. Mac users should always download ebooks and open the ebooks with Adobe Reader, not Preview (which is a Mac’s default PDF reader).

If you find a book we don’t own, you’ll see three icons – the first allows you a 5 minute preview to check its contents. The second allows you to request a rental (which in most cases is accepted), whilst the third allows you to suggest that the library purchases the book.

E-Resource of the Month – Zotero

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What is Zotero?

Zotero is free open source reference management software created by George Mason University. It is a community-based project – improvements and updates are made and tested by members. Zotero is not owned by multinational companies, like other referencing software is. It can be integrated with web browsers through plug-ins, and once the plug-in is installed, whenever you use resources such as library catalogues, bibliographic databases (e.g. JSTOR, Google Scholar) or even websites, the full reference information of your results can be saved to your Zotero library. A Word plug-in will insert citations and bibliographies into your essays.

How do I access Zotero?

You can access Zotero from its website. It’s not linked from the library A-Z of e-resources page, as it’s not a resource limited to academic students. Anyone can use Zotero, and you don’t even have to register an account with your university email address, so you can keep your references after you graduate!

Using Zotero

First, create an account with Zotero. Then use the ‘download now’ icon on the main page to download the plug-ins for Firefox and Word. It’s recommended you use Firefox, even if you have to install it, since this is the only browser you can use to allow the Word plug-in to work. You’ll also see ‘Zotero’ appear in the bottom right of your browser – use this to open Zotero. When you search the library catalogue or any other electronic resource or website, you’ll notice an icon in the address bar, that will allow you to ‘bookmark’ the references you wish to. These will be saved to your library.

When you write your essay, make sure the Zotero toolbar is available. If not, try Tools>Add Ins or File>Options>Add Ins (depending on which version of Word you have) to select it. When you wish to enter an in-text citation, click the first Zotero tool, ‘Zotero Insert Citation’, then choose your citation style. Click on the ‘Z’ icon and choose ‘classic view’ to show your entire library. Choose the item you want to cite. Repeat this throughout your essay. To create a bibliography, choose the third Zotero tool, ‘Zotero Insert Bibliography’, which will create a bibliography for all the citations you’ve used, in the correct citation style.

More documentation about using Zotero is available on their website, or please contact Kevin Wilson, subject librarian for Media, Computing and IMS, for more help using Zotero.

E-Resource of the Month – ACLS Humanities E-book

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What is ACLS Humanities E-book?

Most of the library’s ebooks are supplied by Dawsonera and available from either their website or via our library catalogue. However, we do subscribe to ebooks from other places. ACLS Humanities E-book is an online collection of around 2800 ebooks in various fields of humanities, including Art, History, Media and Politics. These books are provided in collaboration with twenty learned societies, nearly 100 contributing publishers and librarians at the University of Michigan’s Scholarly Publishing Office. These titles are recommended and reviewed by scholars.

How do I access ACLS Humanities E-book?

Go to the E-Resources A-Z list. You can leave it as All e-resources selected or click A (either way, it will be one of the first results that appears). Click on the G icon if you’re on-campus and click on the W icon if you’re off-campus. If accessing off-campus, you may be asked to log-in with your Goldsmiths IT username and password. Alternatively, ebooks can be accessed via the library catalogue (see below).

Searching ACLS Humanities E-book?

When logged in, you can either browse or search the collections. To browse, click on the browse heading. You’ll then be able to browse by either author, title or subject. Regardless of which you choose, you’ll then be able to browse alphabetically. For instance, if you wanted a book on film noir, you could choose to browse by subject, then select ‘F’ and scroll down until you find film noir. Click on the subject to see which ebooks are available. Searching allows you to enter keywords, e.g. film noir again, and you can even limit by author/publisher/title/subject if you wish. To access the full text of a book, click its title, then click on the chapters you wish to use.

Titles from ACLS Humanities E-book have also been linked to our library catalogue, so it might be more likely that you find them this way. Just as you would any e-book, you’d just need to click on the ‘electronic book [click here to access]’ in the location field on the results page of the catalogue, and then click on the link in the record to reach the full text.

E-books can only be read one page at a time, but chunks of three pages at a time can be downloaded as PDFs should you wish to print.

E-Resource of the Month – Article Search +

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What is Article Search+?

Article Search+ is a tool that allows users to search across the full breadth of online content that Goldsmiths library subscribes to (journal articles, electronic books), as well as providing access to resources from the Primo Central index (papers from open access repositories) in one single search.

Unlike the library catalogue, Article Search+ also allows you to search by article titles, article authors, and keywords found in the articles.

Individual databases can be still be accessed from the E-Resources A-Z list or from subject support pages as before, but Article Search+ provides a quick and easy to use alternative option for finding academic content. Most databases we subscribe to are searchable through Article Search+. The main exceptions are EBSCO databases, e.g. PsycInfo and PsycArticles – please access these from the A-Z list.

How do I access Article Search+?

Article Search+ is available directly on the library website. Use the yellow search box, and ensure it’s set to Article Search+, rather than catalogue. Alternatively, if you’d rather go directly to Article Search+ (for instance, you might wish to perform an Advanced Search), click on Resources from the library website, and then choose the Article Search+ link.

Searching Article Search+

Article Search+ is designed to function much more like a Google-type search engine. The simple search allows you to enter a number of keywords, e.g. social media, Arab Spring (you don’t even need to use ‘AND’ if combining keywords). Because of the amount of content available, most searches like this will find thousands of results. You can add more keywords to reduce these results, e.g. Twitter or Egypt.

Alternatively, you can use the filters on the left to refine your results. You can include/exclude various topics, include/exclude the work of certain authors, choose journal collections, select dates, include/exclude resource types, select languages, and include/exclude journal titles. Article Search + even suggests similar searches to try.

There is also an advanced search that you can use to set criteria before you search, e.g. you might wish to search by publication date or resource type in advance. Results are ranked by relevance (although you can change to date, popularity, author or title). Once you’ve found a resource you like, use the icon to access the full text where available.

For a video demo of how Article Search+ works (from Ex-Libris), please see below:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=fDc6kJo6SX8]

Goldsmiths Information Skills Tutorial (GIST)

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Goldsmiths Information Skills Tutorial (GIST) is a new tool created by the library, inspired by the Glasgow School of Art library’s excellent InfosmART project. The main objective of GIST is to guide you through the research process from start to finish and to give you the skills that will make academic research easier. We’ve broken the project down into four key areas; PLAN, FIND, EVALUATE and USE. See below for more detail about each.

GIST is more than just descriptive. It also has a substantial interactive element. Each module has quizzes or games so that you can test what you’ve learned. So soon enough, you’ll be able to demonstrate a knowledge of instructional verbs and what they mean, as well as knowing what constitutes plagiarism.

GIST is a VLE-based project, so you’ll need to access it from the Library pages from the VLE or via this link. Please use your campus log-in details to log-in (e.g. those you use for email). We hope you find it an invaluable resource for your research and that you revisit it often. Please leave feedback if there’s something you particularly like or if there’s something we can improve.

PLAN – this is the first stage of the research process. We’ll discuss why you need information, what your assignment title means, the kinds of information that are available to you and which are most appropriate.

FIND – the next stage will help you find the information you need once you’ve identified it. For instance, we’ll show you how to find various types of information (e.g. books, images, multimedia), how to access both print and electronic journals, how to use databases to find articles, how to design effective search strategies and how to use the Internet.

EVALUATE – in this stage, we’ll explain the importance of evaluating the material you’ve found. We’ll discuss the key criteria you need to consider when evaluating resources, how information is published and how to evaluate unconventional resources (e.g. websites, audiovisual materials).

USE – after the first three stages, you’re almost ready to start writing. However, even though you’ve identified, found and evaluated your information, you still need to use this information properly, according to academic standards. Here, we’ll cover citation and referencing, plagiarism and copyright issues.

E-Resource of the Month – Cite Them Right

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What is Cite Them Right?

Cite Them Right is an electronic resource for guidance on citing and referencing to avoid accidental plagerism. It will help you reference almost any possible information type, ensuring that you can create full and accurate citations and bibliographies for your assignments. It covers many different referencing systems including Harvard, APA, MLA, MHRA, and Vancouver. The print copy is now in its 9th edition (2013) – we have many copies in the library.

How do I access Cite Them Right?

Go to the E-resources A-Z list. Click on the G icon if you’re on-campus and click on the W icon if you’re off-campus. You’ll then be asked to log-in via Shibboleth. Enter your ITS log-in details (what you use to log into PCs/Macs, e.g. css01fb), not your campus log-in details (e.g. what you use for email/VLE). It should then take you to the Cite Them Right homepage.

Searching Cite Them Right

On the homepage, you can get a brief overview of the resource with the embedded Youtube video. Otherwise, you can use the basics tabs across the top of the page to navigate the different resources types, e.g. books, journals, digital and the Internet. Click on a tab for more detailed information, e.g. clicking on books asks you for which type of book (printed, electronic, chapters from a book). You’ll then receive a citation order and instructions/examples of how to cite the resource. You can even try yourself. Alternatively, from the homepage, use the search bar. Enter a resource type, e.g. website or Youtube, and pick the correct option from the search results. You can filter these search results by citation style.

It’s worth noting that there are also numerous examples of online referencing software that can help with referencing. These will allow you to save information from the resources you use, e.g. books, websites, newspaper articles, into a library and then automatically create citations and bibliographies from them. We recommend Zotero as the simplest and most effective to use. Please ask your subject librarian for help using Zotero.

E-Resource of the Month – SAGE Research Methods Online

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What is SAGE Research Methods Online?

SAGE Research Methods is a resource that supports researchers, staff and students with their research projects. It comprises over 100,00 pages of SAGE’s methods book, journal and reference (e.g. dictionaries and encyclopaedias) content on research and allows researchers to explore and understand the research methods that will help them design their own projects. Of particular interest might be the well known ‘Little Green’ and ‘Little Blue’ series of books. Many of these books won’t be available in print in the library. SRMO also features videos to explain research methods to the user and tutorials for how to use the resource.

How do I access SAGE Research Methods Online?

Go to the E-Resources A-Z list and scroll down to ‘SAGE Research Methods Online’. Click on the G icon if you’re on-campus and click on the W icon if you’re off-campus. If on-campus, you’ll be taken to the SRMO homepage. If off-campus, you might be asked to sign in with your Shibboleth details via a proxy server.

Searching SAGE Research Methods Online

When logged in, you can you start to browse the entire content of the SRMO website. Click on the drop down ‘content’ on the homepage to choose books, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, journal articles and more. Just below this are four tools that you can use – (i) explore the methods map, (ii) access methods lists, (iii) browse little green books and (iv) the advanced search function. With this you can search for the types of research you wish to learn about, e.g. focus groups, and choose content by content type or publication date. Results can then be refined to be made more specific.