Friday 25 February 2011

There's more to the library catalogue...

…than just being able to search for books and journals. For example, did you know that you can save your search queries for future reference and set up alerts to be notified when new books are added to stock? No? It’s easy enough to set up. Simply sign-in to the catalogue, run your search as normal and then click on the ‘Save query’ link which appears to the left of the results (just below the search box, in fact). There is then an option to save the query or set up an alert. You can manage your saved queries and alerts by clicking on ‘My Account’ in the top right of the screen.
Ever wondered what the ‘e-Shelf’ link in the top right of the catalogue screen is used for? The e-Shelf is where you can save lists of useful books and journals and then organise them into folders. For example, you might wish to add a list of reading for your module so that you can easily refer back to it and see which books are currently available. To add items to your e-Shelf, make sure you are signed in to the catalogue and then click the little white star which appears next to each result in the results list. The star turns yellow, indicating it has been added. If you click on the e-Shelf link in the top right of the page you can then view and organise all items you have added.

Thursday 17 February 2011

Free online research collections...

…are now available through JISC Content.JISC are an official UK universities organisation and they have sourced content from a large number of highly reputable bodies, including the British Library and The National Archives. It is well worth exploring the site.
On the topic of free content, many top American universities are now offering free online courses. These include a growing number of free psychology lectures. Yale University, for example, offer an entire series of 18 hour-long lectures on ‘An Introduction to Psychology’ free of charge on YouTube.

Wednesday 9 February 2011

More journal articles and research papers...

…can be found by making use of Web of Science. While we may recommend EBSCO PsycINFO and ScienceDirect as the main databases for most courses in the School of Psychology, Web of Science is an excellent source of further research. It is what is known as a ‘citation database’, which means that it indexes a large number of journals (over 10,000 different publications) and conference papers (currently over 120,000) but without the full-text you may find in some other databases. You can search for the full-text within UEL’s collections by clicking on the ‘SFX’ link which appears below each article.
To access Web of Science, choose ‘Web of Knowledge’ from the A-Z list on the Library’s e-journals and databases webpage. Once you are in, click through until you reach the Web of Science search screen. The best way to find things is to start with a fairly simple search term. From the results page you will then see lots of different options on the left-hand side to refine your results. There is also the option to export citations to Endnote.

Wednesday 2 February 2011

New books in the library...

...added to stock during the month of January 2011 can be viewed from this link: January 2011 new books list. Please note that it only lists items purchased for stock from the library's 'psychology' book funds.
 A quiet month, but there have been a few new additions to stock plus a few books where extra copies have been purchased. Brand new titles include Howitt's "Introduction to qualitative methods in psychology" and Bjorklund's "Journey of adulthood (7th edition)". New e-books include Worden's "Grief counseling and grief therapy (4th edition)" and the 3rd edition of Leonard's "Fundamentals of psychopharmacology".
 All books, including e-books, can be found using the library catalogue.