Tag Archives: databases

Watching Theatre Online – yes please!

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.

Getting better search results

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.

moreoptions
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.
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.
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.

Literature Online (LION)

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.

LitOnlinequicksearch

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.

LitOnlinetextsearch

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.

LitOnlinetextsby Bryon

Author search: find biographies, full texts, criticism and reference on a particular author

LitOnlinesearchwithinausten

Use the ‘search within text’ function to search for instances of words of phrases in a particular work

LitOnlinesearchwithinresults

Criticism search: find full texts of articles on a topic of your choice.

LitOnlinecriticism

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.

LitOnlinereferencebiography

For more hints and tips, go to the Literature Online guide.

 

[screenshot]

Euromonitor Passport

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.

How to use Passport

Logon 

(You can access Passport from the library subject guides,  the Eresources A-Z or by searching for Euromonitor Passport on Library Search)

Search by Keyword

You can search by Keyword from the main page by entering your keyword in the search box in the top right hand corner.

Keyword search

The symbols next to each result indicate the type of content found e.g. statistic or
category briefing report.

results passport

Tree Searching

If you click on search in the top left hand corner something called tree searching appears.

tree results

tree searching

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:

Industry search
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.

dashboard

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.

tree results

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
  •  @euromonitor
  •  https://www.facebook.com/euromonitorinternational
  •  http://www.youtube.com/user/euromonitor

 

 

Web of Science – new interface

Web of Science was the first major database made available for online searching by students themselves. It launched in the U.K. back in 1990 as BIDS (Bath Information and Data Service, as it was based at Bath University.)

Despite the name, Web of Science (WoS) contains something for everybody. It includes the Science, Social Science, and Arts and Humanities Citation Indexes.  Clearly it cannot cover everything in such wide areas: in fact, it only covers about 5% of the journals published.  However, it covers the core titles, the journals which are most cited in each field each year.

This makes it an excellent first choice for exploring a subject. You get to see what has appeared in the core journals, without anything that will be too obscure or hard to find. For undergraduate work that will usually be ideal. Researchers have the further option to search for papers which cite the key papers on their topic, to see how the field has progressed.

The latest WoS interface has a black banner with orange lettering, very like the new RHUL style.  Perhaps we were ahead of a trend? Beneath it the search form has been reduced to a single search bar, like Google’s (and LibrarySearch). For more complex searches you can click “Add another field”.

It is still possible to narrow your search to just some of the indexes, to save time and reduce unwanted results.  Just click on “More settings” to see the indexes and deselect those that are not needed by unchecking their boxes, as in this example:

WoS science search

In the search above, the inverted commas around “honey bees” specify that we only want those two words together as a phrase.  The asterisk after disease* is a “wild card” which will also search for ‘diseases’ or ‘diseased’.

Notice in the black banner that we are searching “Web of Science core collection” but there is an orange arrow by it.  Clicking that gives the option to search other databases, in particular Biosis Previews, which lets you search the largest single life science database from 1969 to 2008.  You can also choose “All databases” to search them all at the same time. This makes WoS the core resource for biologists.

When the results appear, the FindIt@RHUL  lozenge which previously appeared under every result has disappeared.  Don’t worry, just click on the solid block labelled “Full Text” and the familiar blue button will reappear.

WoS search results

The range of saving buttons above the search list has been replaced by a single block labelled “Save to EndNote online”.  But it has a down arrow beside it.  Click that, and you will get more options, including “Save to EndNote desktop” and “Save to RefWorks”, the main supported options at Royal Holloway.

If you liked the old interface, don’t be put off by the solid blocks of the new one, everything still works as it did.  Whether you are researching for a first year essay or a doctoral thesis, WoS is a good place to start.

 

Adrian Machiraju

Social Care Online – New Interface

Social Care Online is provided by the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) and is the UK’s largest database of information on all aspects of social care and social work.  Content includes legislation, government documents, practice and guidance, systematic reviews, research briefings, UK grey literature, digital media, books, text books and journal articles.  If you have been using Social Care Online for your research be aware that the old interface will no longer be available from the new year, instead you will need to search the new Social Care Online beta version.

How do I access Social Care Online?

Under E-Resources on the Social Work subject guide

OR

1. Go to the Databases A-Z guide on the Library subject guides

2. Go to S

3. Select Social Care Online

 

Searching on a topic

Use the standard search box to search for your topic and then filter the results by using the options on the left hand side.

 

Advanced search

To get access to advanced search features, save searches and export results you will need to first register with Social Care Online.  Once you have done this you will need to login to start searching.

The advanced search allows you to select multiple keywords which you can combine with the search operators AND, OR and NOT in the following fields:

  • Title
  • Author
  • Editor
  • Publisher
  • Publication Year
  • Subject terms
  • Location
  • Abstract

Linking Google Scholar to Royal Holloway and Senate House Library

Did you know that you can link Google Scholar to the library here at Royal Holloway and also Senate House? It’s a really useful thing to do as it means when you search for things you can check both collections.

Go to Google Scholar

Login with or create a Google Account if you don’t already have one.

From the Google Scholar home page click on Settings in top right hand corner.

Gogole Scholar Settings

 

 

From the Settings Page click on Library links from the left hand side

Library Links

 

 

 

 

 

If you are on campus Royal Holloway will automatically appear, along with Open WorldCat. Off campus you may need to search for Royal Holloway (if you log in and  save this you will only need to search once).

Search for Senate House.

Library links 2

 

Check both boxes next to Senate House Libraries – Available at Senate House and University of London Senate House – Full Text @ My Library.

You will need to register to use Senate House resources.

There is more information on Senate House in this post.

Now when you search using Google Scholar you will be able to see if the article is available through Royal Holloway library or Senate House.

Find it @ RHUL will often appear to the right of the citation but if it doesn’t click More below the citations to see options for Senate House and if appropriate Find it @ RHUL

Scholar senate house and find it at RHUL

 

Using the Biographies feature in Nexis

Biographies nexisThe biographies search feature in Nexis allows you to search for people. You can run searches on All Biographies and News which searches both the biographical information at the news information or you can search through the biographical sources (combined or individually).

The Biographical sources are:

  • Biographies de Acteurs Publics
  • Biographies of Ams (Welsh Assembly)
  • Biographies of Civil Servants
  • Biographies of Members of the European Parliament
  • Biographies of MLAs (Northern Ireland Assemblies)
  • Biographies of MSPs (Scottish Parliament)
  • Biographies of Peers
  • Biographies of Westminster Members of Parliament
  • Content5 Personen (Deutsch)
  • Content5 Persons (English)
  • Directory of Directors (Directors Profiles)
  • ICC Directors (Irish)
  • ICC Disqualified Directors
  • Le Trombinoscope
  • London Stock Exchange – Board Membership*
  • Marquis Who’s Who Biographies
  • Producer Sanction Report
  • Standard & Poor’s Corporate Register of Directors & Executives
  • The Associated Press Candidate Biographies
  • The CIO Directory
  • TOP 100 INTELLIGENCE ECONOMIQUE
  • TOP 100 LOBBYING D’ENTREPRISE
  • Top Management Biographies
  • Who’s Who in American Art
  • Who’s Who in American Politics
  • Who’s Who In European Business*
  • Who’s Who in European Business and Industry
  • Who’s Who in European Politics*
  • Who’s Who in France
  • Who’s Who in International Banking*
  • Who’s Who in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States*

This video shows you how to do a basic search.

How do I ensure that my search retrieves all articles containing the different spellings of a person’s first name and/or surname?

To use multiple name variations when searching for a person:

  1. Open the Biographies search form.
  2. In Surname, enter the surname of the person that you are looking for using the wildcard * to account for all single character combinations. For example, to find all variations of the name Clark, enter Cl*rk*, this will search for Clark, Clarke and even Clerk. Where you cannot account for all the variations using the *, use the or connector. For example, to find the surname McCallum enter maccallum or mccallum.
  3. In First Name enter the first name of the person that you are researching using the wild card * to account for any single character differences. For example, Tan*a will search for Tania or Tanya. Where the * cannot account for all the variations of the name, use the or connector. For example, to find the name John or Jonathan enter john or jonathan.
  4. Click on Search to retrieve your results.
How do I search for a person within a specific source?
  1. Open the Biographies search form.
  2. In Surname and First Name, enter the name of the person you are searching for.
  3. From the Sources drop-down list, select the source that you would like to search. It will default to All Biographies + News, but you can select a smaller source such as Executive Biographies.
  4. Click on Search to retrieve your results.