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- Finding and evaluating information
Finding and evaluating information
The resources on this page will help you to search for, evaluate, manage and keep up to date with information for use in your academic work.
Planning and preparing
It is essential to understand what you are being asked to do before you start searching for information.
- Skills@Library Interpreting the task page
Detailed advice and activities to help you interpret assignment titles and understand what you are being asked to do.
Finding the information you need
Using appropriate and relevant information sources will help to strengthen the quality of your work.
- Understanding your reading list tutorial
Your reading lists are a good starting point for finding good quality, relevant information.
- Subject resources
Your subject page offers help with choosing the most relevant sources for your subject area and guidance on how to search for them effectively. Choose your subject from the list below and then select subject resources.
- Using the Library Catalogue (tutorial)
- Finding journal articles (tutorial)
- Web searching (tutorial)
- Finding information for your assignment: Search tips and techniques (tutorial)
This short tutorial introduces you to basic searching techniques. - Keyword search: improving your results (PDF)
Evaluating the information you find
It is essential to be able to think critically and judge what information is relevant and appropriate for your purpose.
- Evaluating information tutorial
- Evaluating information checklist (PDF)
- The Internet Detective
An online tutorial to help students develop the critical thinking required for their internet research. - Skills@Library critical thinking page
Detailed information, advice and activities to develop your critical thinking skills.
Managing the information you find
Storing your references
- Skills@Library EndNote pages: guides, online tutorials, workshops
EndNote not only helps you to store and manage your references, it also works with Microsoft Word to automatically insert citations and create your bibliography or reference list. - Skills@Library referencing tools page
Information about other reference management tools.
Social bookmarking
- What? Why? How? of social bookmarking
A brief overview of using social bookmarking in your studies. - Social bookmarking in plain English (video)
- An example of how an academic uses social bookmarking with his students (video)
Keep up to date with new information
Keeping up to date with new information in your research or study area can be time-consuming. Using alerting services and RSS can make this a more efficient process.
- Alerting services
- Saving your Catalogue searches (video)
How to save your catalogue searches and have the Library automatically run your searches every week, emailing you any new results.


