Have you seen our new resource, Digital Theatre Plus?
Digital Theatre Plus productions. digitaltheatreplus.com
Digital Theatre Plus is an online video resource which provides access to a range of productions: Shakespeare, classic plays, new writing, classical music and opera. It will be useful for students studying Shakespeare, adaptations and those interested in playwriting.
It is easily accessible from the English Subject Guide under ‘Multimedia Resources’.
Once you’ve accessed the site, you can stream productions in full, or break them down by scene, act, or speech – and the database also includes interviews with the cast and creative teams behind a number of the productions. Digital Theatre Plus are always adding to the collection, and you can sign up for updates or follow them on Facebook.
If you’re watching from home please use CampusAnywhere to access the site without having to log in, but if you’re on campus you should find that you can watch any of the productions.
Any problems or questions, please contact Kim in the Library on k.coles@rhul.ac.uk.
We just received an email on narrowing down search results – “I’m searching for books on the idea of performance but I always get thousands of results which are based around performance meaning how well something is performing such as a business etc. Do you have any suggestions for how I can search for more relevant materials?”
So I thought it might be useful to put the answer into a blog post – as we’ve all been there.
Things to Try to get better search results
1. Change your keywords.
If your search for ‘performance’ brings back unrelated items, try changing what you search for. Synonyms might include ‘drama’, ‘theatre’, ‘performing arts’ etc.
Try adding more keywords e.g. ‘audience participation’, or a particular theorist, theory or performer you’re interested in.
LibrarySearch and other databases have list of subject headings – click on these to find more examples of keywords.
Where to find the subject headings in LibarySearch
Select the headings which are relevant, and choose the checkbox to include or exclude them from your search.
2. Combine your keywords.
Databases will accept certain combinations of words and use them to make your search more effective.
3. Change the database.
LibrarySearch is pretty general – if you’re after items on a particular subject, go to your subject guide and try the Finding E-resources link for a list of more specific databases.
4. Who’s cited what?
When you finish a recommended article, or book, go to the back and take a look at what they referenced when writing it – then look these up and carry on!
You can also use Google Scholar to see who’s cited the article or book you’re reading now – and see what they said on the topic.
Look for the ‘Cited by’ part, and click it to get information on other articles and books.
Click ‘Cited By’ to see other articles which reference this one above.
Try LibrarySearch to get hold of articles or books, and if it’s not there, don’t panic – we can get it!
5. Ask your Librarian!
Whether it’s a presentation or PhD thesis, you can always arrange a meeting with your librarian to go through the subject and searching with you, so don’t be afraid to ask.
Happy New Term! And with it comes new training workshops from the Library.
Last year, in the Autumn Term we saw 6547 students – that’s equivalent to all of the students in the Arts and Sciences faculties put together!
We’ve had some really nice and positive feedback on our sessions too…
[I] would definitely like to attend more of these workshops after attending this one
[The Librarian] who gave the workshop was very articulate, concise and knowledgeable.
this course showed me how to navigate [the Library website] efficiently to get to the parts that I need.
I thought everything we covered was of use.
But that’s not all – we’re always looking to improve the workshops, so we’re keen to hear suggestions for more sessions, or changes we can make too.
I would be interested in attending a workshop on the more advanced features of EndNote.
So the workshops are great, but what’s on offer this term? All of our training can be found on the Training page of your subject guide, and you will need to register to attend (but this is free and easy to do – email us if you have any trouble).
Working on a dissertation or essay? Come to our Search Our Stuff and Find It Faster workshops on 17th and 26th February and practice search techniques.
New to referencing and bibliographies?RefWorks is a great resource for undergraduates, and EndNote is a powerful postgraduate referencing tool – come along on 28th January or 5th February to find out more. And if you’re already using RefWorks, but have questions, come to our Question and answer session on 11th March.
If you’ve only got half an hour to spare, or think RefWorks and EndNote aren’t for you, come to Bedford Library on 3rd March and get acquainted with free Zotero referencing. Researchers might find our half hour session on social referencing site Mendeley useful too.
Every Tuesday throughout Spring Term, Bedford Library room 2-03 hosts our Bitesize, subject specific workshops.
There are so many books written by and about Shakespeare, that the Dewey Decimal system (which we use to classify books by subject on the shelves) has allocated a number just for Shakespeare. At Royal Holloway, we put all of our Shakespeare collection in 824 – which is on the Ground Floor of Founder’s Library.
After a lot of questions, we’ve realised it’s pretty difficult to find what you’re after in this section, so we’ve hoping this blog post and some better signs will help you to find the book that you need!
In a nutshell, there’s so much under 824, that the classification system has to use letters after 824 to distinguish between the different kinds of work available: biographies, criticism on plays, copies of plays, collections of plays… If you’re using LibrarySearch to find books, make sure to write down the whole location number e.g. 824 B SCH
I’m looking for a biography of Shakespeare or information on his life.
Try 824 B.
You’ll find books such as William Shakespeare : a compact documentary life; William Shakespeare : a biography; Shakespeare revealed: a biography and Shakespeare’s other lives : an anthology of fictional depictions of the Bard.
I’m looking for general criticism on Shakespeare, or criticism on the Comedies, Tragedies, Histories as a group.
Try 824 D.
You’ll find books such as A Companion to Shakespeare Studies; Studying Shakespeare : a guide to the plays and Shakespeare : three problem plays.
I’m looking for books on Shakespeare’s style and use of language.
These are under 824 E.
Here you’ll find books such as Shakespearean Sentences : a study in style and syntax and Shakespeare’s Errant Texts.
I’ve been told to read a play in the Arden Shakespeare Collection/The Oxford Shakespeare Collection.
The Arden Collection is a group of publications, and they are kept in order of title under 824 M.
I want to research a play, or poem.
You will find individual copies of plays, and lots of criticism on those individual plays under 824 O to 824 Z.
The classification then uses numbers to distinguish between plays, but we would recommend using LibrarySearch to find a specific book that you’re interested in, and then going to that place on the shelf.
As a general guide:
824 O to 824 R = Comedies and criticism on Shakespeare’s comedies
824 S to 824 V = Tragedies and criticism on Shakespeare’s tragedies
824 W to 824 X = Histories and criticism on Shakespeare’s tragedies
824 Y = Sonnets and criticism on Shakespeare’s sonnets
The USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive contains 50,000 digitized interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust. Interviews are approximately two and a half hours long and some are supplemented with photographs, documents, and artifacts pertaining to the interviewee’s family and wartime experiences.
Interviewees speak on the following topics:
Jewish Survivors
Rescuers and Aid Providers
Sinti and Roma Survivors
Liberators and Liberation Witnesses
Political Prisoners
Jehovah’s Witness Survivors
War Crimes Trials Participants
Survivors of Eugenics Policies
Homosexual Survivors
In April 2013, the Visual History Archive expanded to include a collection of 65 audiovisual testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi genocide. Conducted in two countries (U.S.A. and Rwanda), and two languages (English and Kinyarwanda), this initial collection of 65 Rwandan testimonies was accomplished in collaboration with Aegis Trust and the Kigali Genocide Memorial.
In February 2014, 12 audiovisual testimonies of survivors of the 1937-38 Nanjing Massacre were integrated into the VHA. These testimonies are in Mandarin and were conducted in Nanjing, China through a partnership with the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall.
It’s a unique resource, and Royal Holloway Library is the only place in the UK with access to the collection – which means that researchers often come from far and wide to view the videos.
How do I use it?
There is a link on the Databases A-Z, under U, and once you’re on the site, you will need to create an account in order to log in, search, and view videos.
Follow the link to the website
If on-campus, no login is needed to access the website
If off-campus, you will need to sign in with your Royal Holloway computer username and password
Once on the website, you must register to create a personal username and password
Due to high bandwidth, videos to be viewed must be downloaded to Royal Holloway’s servers rather than viewed directly from USC website.
Some videos already downloaded and available for immediate viewing; just click on the videos marked “Viewable now” to watch
Others must be requested for download. Because our server space is limited, students must get tutor’s permission before requesting a download.
Once requested, the video will be added to Royal Holloway’s servers and will be available to view after 12-48 hours. Videos can only be viewed on campus, but you are able to log in and make a request for a video to be downloaded from any off-campus PC.
Searching the archive
Searching is easy, you can search on a topic, for a name, and use links in the videos to skip to particular sections relevant to your interests. The USC Shoah Foundation has a YouTube Channel with lots of information, but we’ve collected searching tips in this playlist.
Have you used the archive? Do you think it would be useful in your research? Contact library@rhul.ac.uk for more information, or leave a comment below.
On 27th October, I was lucky enough to be part of a team organising a visit to the BFI’s Reuben Library on the beautiful South Bank. A team of librarians from different universities were shown around the depths of the BFI offices, the book stacks, and the library itself – and I thought it might be worth letting some of you know what kinds of collections the BFI has to offer (it is only 40 minutes away by train, after all).
The Library
The BFI Reuben Library is open Tuesday – Saturday, and is just across the road from Waterloo Station. It’s free to use (although they’ll ask you fill out a registration card) and has the largest collection of film and TV material in the world. They hold 35,000 books, over 5000 magazines (the oldest being a copy of The Optical Magic Lantern Journal and Photographic Enlarger from June 1889), and 4.1 million press cuttings – some of these are available on site, but others will need to be requested. You can check their catalogue to view the collections here.
Academics and students are their largest user group – but the Library is also used by journalists, historians, and anyone interested in film.
Special Collections at the BFI
The Special Collections (like an archive) hold all sorts of unique and fascinating materials, including
unrealised screenplays
drafts of screenplays
images from film sets
correspondence between filmakers, cast, crew, etc
shooting schedules
marketing materials
film posters
costume design sketches
much more!
You can search for special collections material in the catalogue, and request to view items you’re interested in. Materials are collected from pre-production of a film, production itself, post-production – and the collections can be very unique. At the moment an exhibition in the small space beside the screens takes material from one of the continuity editors on Star Wars IV: A New Hope and includes copies of scripts, unseen photographs of the actors taken to ensure continuity, and clips from the final film itself.
A visit to the BFI Reuben Library can give you an idea of what is available to you, and it can be a great resource for your research too!
Literature Online has a new look! So what better time to feature it as Resource of the Week. If you’ve never used Literature Online, it’s got some really useful features and a huge collection of over 330,000 works of English and American literature covering poetry, drama, and prose from the 8th to the 21st centuries. LION also includes thousands of critical articles, essays, biographies and encyclopedia entries.
How to find it:
On your subject guide
OR
Go to the Databases A-Z
Go to L
Click on the Literature Online link
Quick Search: searches all content, including texts (poetry, prose, drama), literary works, criticism and reference.
Text Search: find full texts of poetry, prose and drama, but author or literary movement.
Use the ‘Look up’ function to get more reliable results.
View texts by this author to read full texts of their works. You can also search for works in a particular genre, or by an author in a certain time period, or of a particular nationality.
Author search: find biographies, full texts, criticism and reference on a particular author
Use the ‘search within text’ function to search for instances of words of phrases in a particular work
Criticism search: find full texts of articles on a topic of your choice.
Reference search: find biographies of authors, bibliographies on certain topics, and more. Use the ‘look up’ function to be more specific.
Tick ‘biographies’ to search for biographical information on authors.
Marketline profiles major companies, industries and geographies, MarketLine is one of the most prolific publishers of business information today. They were primarily a Market Research company but they have expanded their offering to include the following:
The Financial Deals Tracker provides information on mergers & acquisitions, private equity, venture finance, & private placement transactions; IPOs; and partnerships – across the various industries and countries covered by MarketLine.
The Company Prospector is a list builder tool that enables you to generate prospect lists for specific industries and geographies, and perform competitor and vendor analytics on them.
The Company Report Generator too enables you to generate customised company reports including analytical texts and charts on demand.
The Industry & Advisory Prospector is an analytical tool that draws from the Financial Deals Tracker and allows you to custom generate lists of advisory & investment firms operating in specific industries.
They are an excellent resource for Company Information.
This short video introduces some of the things Marketline does:
To search for information using a keyword, type your selected word(s) into the empty search bar and click on Go.
You will be taken to a results page containing all content matching your keyword search.
Arrange your results using the Sorted by button at the top of your results list.
Click on the arrow to sort by relevance, publication date, or title (which lists the results alphabetically).
Alternatively (or in addition), you can refine your search results with an additional keyword search or by using the list in the right-hand column of the page.
You can narrow by industry, geography, subject, topic, company information, or publication date.
To further refine your search results to one information type (news; financial deals; opinion; reports & briefs; databooks; companies; countries; or industries), click on the relevant tab running across the top of the page.
The tabs are color-coded and change color when you hover your mouse over them.
To retrace your current search trail, click on the small drop-down arrow at the top left of the page, next to the text that reads ‘Your search has returned’.
This will reveal the various search parameters that you have selected for that particular search (this is known as a breadcrumb trail).
You also have the option to view your results as a list or as a group using the two-sided button at the top right of the page. ‘List’ will sort your results according to the parameters you have chosen using the ‘Sorted by’ button, while ‘group’ will arrange your results by information type.
Downloading
Depending on the information type, MarketLine Advantage allows you to download content in one of three formats: PDF, Excel, or PowerPoint
Once you have clicked through to your chosen information item, your download option(s) are reflected at the top left of your screen.
Click on the button and select to download or save the file to a location on your computer.
Passport is a global market research database providing statistics, analysis, reports, surveys and breaking news on industries, countries and consumers worldwide. Passport connects market research to analysing market context, competitor insight and future trends impacting businesses globally. Passport covers more than 200 countries and regions. It is useful for company information too.
Passport covers the following areas:
1) Industry data – multi-country relational database of market and category sizes, market shares, distribution patterns, sales forecasts and other measurements relevant to each sector.
2) Country reports – in-depth analysis reports on both developed and emerging national markets. Each report provides qualitative commentary on sales trends, new product and marketing developments, consumer preferences, national company and brand competition and market strategies, and the views and assumptions underlying national sales forecasts.
3) Global reports assessing the key issues affecting international market performance, with a focus on important developments by product sector and big picture competition strategy.
4) Company profiles – analytical profiles of the top international players in the industry, compiled in a standardised format for cross analysis. 5) Comment – articles and presentations on key themes and discussion topics around the dynamics of the category.
This video (aimed at their corporate clients) describes what Passport does.
You can search by Keyword from the main page by entering your keyword in the search box in the top right hand corner.
The symbols next to each result indicate the type of content found e.g. statistic or
category briefing report.
Tree Searching
If you click on search in the top left hand corner something called tree searching appears.
Using the search tree involves :
Choosing a category e.g. alcoholic drinks. By clicking on the + you can be more
specific within that sector e.g. beer and/or cider.
You then choose world region or countries.
You can then run your search or decide to only display the data/statistics.
If you run your results you can then choose to filter the results by category, geography,
statistics or analysis and date.
Industry Searching
Under Industries, select the sector you’re looking for. This where you’ll see various options:
You can then start to think about the different types of data you might be interested in for the
alcoholic drinks market. E.g:
Which countries are largest by size?
Which ones might grow in the future? (so you can get predictions based on the research)
Which are the top companies in this sector?
Dashboards
The Dashboards visualise Passport data and help users see the information in a different way. You can explore trends in a visual format using the interactive world map. This data can also be downloaded using the options above the map.
Searching for companies or brands
Clicking on Search to reveal different options. If you click on Companies or Brands you can be more specific with searching.
Printing and Saving.
Depending on the report type displaying you’ll see different options. You can either open the file in excel, export as a PDF or save to My Pages or print.
By creating a separate account with Passport you can set up alerts via emails or RSS feeds
and return to saved saved or downloads.
Further help
Once logged into
the platform please see the help section which has some good FAQs and videos. Further
information is also available on their social media accounts:
Global Market Research Blog: http://blog.euromonitor.com
MediaHub provides a single search point for all the images and films from the collections of Education Image Gallery, Film and Sound Online, NewsFilm Online plus other services including the Archaeology Data Service (ADS) Image Bank.
Explore by Collection to see all of the video and image collections, including ITV News archives from 1953 – 2007; Channel 4 News archives from 1982 – 2007; Channel 5 News archives from 1997 – 2004; Gaumont Graphic British News from 1920 – 1934.
Anything with the JISC MediaHub logo has been cleared for use in education and teaching, but MediaHub also searches lots of external collections too – these will be clearly marked with information for re-use.
As it’s Library Loves Art month, we’re particularly excited by the Fitzwilliam Museum collections in Cambridge. “Images covering a wide range of pictorial content drawn from the rich, diverse and internationally significant collections of The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, including major artists such as Canaletto, J.M.W. Turner, George Stubbs and John Constable. Every image is tagged by geographical location and a date or period.”
Self-portrait, with the Colosseum, Rome. Maarten van Heemskerck. 1553. The Fitzwilliam Museum
Search Techniques
MediaHub defaults to an OR search, so the system will bring back media containing any of the keywords you search for. e.g. vietnam war brings back results with ‘vietnam’, ‘war’, or both
To make sure that your results contain all of the words you search for, use +. e.g. +vietnam +war brings back results with both ‘vietnam and war’
To exclude one particular word, use -. e.g. asia -korea brings back results with asia, but none with korea.
You can use the simple search box at the top of the page, and access many more options by selecting ‘Advanced Search‘.
Sharing
Images and videos can be saved and downloaded in a number of formats, and you can access a permanent link to the media so that it can be shared.
