Finding and evaluating information

It is essential to understand what you are being asked to do before you start searching for information.

• Skills@Library Interpreting the task
  Detailed advice and activities to help you interpret assignment titles and understand what you are being asked to do.

Using appropriate and relevant information sources will help to strengthen the quality of your work.

Reading lists

Your reading lists are a good starting point for finding good quality, relevant information:

• Understanding your reading list tutorial
• Find your reading list.

Searching beyond your reading lists

• Using the Library Catalogue (tutorial)
  This tutorial will show you the basics of how to use the Library Catalogue, including searching for books and journals, and how to manage your Library record
• Using the Search@Library Catalogue (tutorial)
  This tutorial will show you the basics of how to use the new Search@Library Catalogue, including searching for books and journals, and how to manage your Library record
  

• Finding journal articles (tutorial)
• Web searching (tutorial)
  These two tutorials will introduce you to finding online academic information

• Finding information for your assignment: Search tips and techniques (tutorial)
  This short tutorial introduces you to basic searching techniques which you can adapt and apply when searching in different resources such as Search@Library, Library databases, Google Scholar, etc
• Introduction to literature searching in Dentistry, Healthcare, Medicine, Psychology.
  If you are studying in the Faculty of Medicine and Health you will find these guides helpful (choose your school).

As your course progresses you will be expected to find and use a wide variety of sources and to research more independently. This will be especially important for your  final-year project or dissertation or when you undertake master's-level study.

Finding information for your subject

Your Library Subject support page is the main place to find the most relevant sources of information in your subject, including the key journal databases. It is important to search these databases to get the most up-to-date journal articles and research in your area.

Choose your subject from the list below and then select "Subject resources".

Select your subject from listArabic and Middle Eastern Studies Architecture Art Aviation Biochemistry Biological Sciences Biology Biomedical Sciences Business Chemical Engineering Chemistry Chinese Civil Engineering Classics Colour Science Communications Studies Computing Dentistry Design Earth and Environment East Asian Studies Education Electronic and Electrical Engineering Energy Engineering English Environment Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies Fire and Explosion Engineering Food Science and Nutrition French Genetics Geography Geological Sciences German, Russian and Slavonic Studies Healthcare History History and Philosophy of Science Human Geography Icelandic International health Italian Japanese Law Lifelong Learning Centre Linguistics and Phonetics Mathematics Mechanical Engineering Medicine Medieval studies Microbiology Modern Languages and Cultures Molecular Nanoscience Museum Studies Music NHS Neuroscience Performance and Cultural Industries Petroleum Engineering Pharmacology Philosophy, Religion and History of Science Physical Geography Physics and Astronomy Politics and International Studies Psychology Russian and Slavonic Studies SPEME Social Work Sociology and Social Policy South East Asian Studies Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies Sport and Exercise Sciences Textiles Theatre Theology and Religious Studies Translation Transport Studies World Cinemas Zoology

Advanced searching tips

• Keyword search: improving your results (PDF)
• Citation searching
  Find out who has referenced articles you are interested in.

The Advanced Health literature searching guide is helpful to students in the Faculty of Medicine and Health.

Special Collections

Our Special Collections contain historic, rare and archival material and can be especially useful for accessing primary sources of information for your dissertation. The collections cover wide-ranging subjects across hundreds of thousands of irreplaceable manuscripts and archives and nearly 200,000 rare books.
See the Special Collections site for more information.

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)

• Skills@Library Critical thinking
  As well as evaluating whether information is appropriate and relevant, you need to be able to analyse more deeply the information that you read. Our Critical thinking topic contains detailed information, advice and activities to develop your critical thinking and reading skills.

Storing your references

• Skills@Library EndNote: 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
  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).

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.