Welcome to Royal Holloway! To succeed on your course you will need to be able to search and find information quickly and effectively. To get you off to a good start here are 5 top tips:
1. Finding ebooks
We have a growing number of ebooks which you can access at any time.
To access ebooks you first need to search LibrarySearch. Search by author or keyword in the search box and then narrow your search by selecting RHUL Library Catalogue Only and Limit to Items with Online Full Text Available on the left hand side of the screen. Have a look at the short video below for a demonstration.
2. Searching for scholarly journals
Business Source Complete is a good place to start as it contains thousands of scholarly articles covering all aspects of business and management theory. You can search by keyword, subject, or for a specific article if you already have the details. Both databases also allow you to set-up alerts on topics that interest you.
You may prefer to use Google Scholar to find articles for your assignemts. You can configure Google Scholar to show an access link where full text access through a Royal Holloway subscription is available. To do this follow the steps below:
Sign in to your Google account if you have one. This will allow you to set the preferences so that you can access articles through the Royal Holloway access link on any computer
Click on the ‘Settings’ link in the top right corner
Under Library Links search for Royal Holloway and check the box next to ‘Royal Holloway, University of London – Find it @RHUL’
Finally click the ‘Save’ button
When using these links you will be prompted for your Royal Holloway logon
3. Finding newspaper articles in Nexis
Nexis is a great resource for finding full text newspaper articles and it includes hundreds of UK and international newspapers. You can browse Nexis to see which newspapers are covered or you can search for specific newspapers or groups of newspapers.
Browsing Nexis
To see a list of all UK newspapers covered by Nexis:
Select the Sources tab (at the top left of the screen)
From the tabs beneath this select Browse Sources
Change Filter by country to the country you are interested in (e.g. United Kingdom).
Select the News folder under publication type
Select the Newspapers folder.
A list of titles will now appear, and you can search these individually or in groups.
Searching Nexis
To search for articles, first check that you have the Search and News tabs selected from the options in the top left of the screen.
Enter your keywords into the search box and select a time period. Using In the Headline or Major Mentions options from the drop-down menu ensures that your hits will be more relevant. This is useful for when your search is likely to retrieve a great number of articles.
The list of results displayed gives only brief details. To view the full article, click on the highlighted title of the article.
As well as newspaper articles you can use Nexis to gather information about a company, industry, country and people.
4. Developing effective research skills
Knowing how to effectively search online resources will enhance your academic work. Take a look at one of our library skills courses IS223 How To Research Your Assignment for a step by step guide. This course will help you to identify the key concepts from a given assignment, select the best keywords and show you how to put them together to form an effective search strategy.
For a bit of fun take a look at this video!
5.. Avoiding plagiarism
You will hear the word ‘plagiarism’ referred to alot so what is it and how can I avoid it? Plagiarism involves the process of using or copying someone else’s work and pretending that you thought of it or created it. Plagiarism is viewed as a form of cheating and is a serious academic misconduct.
The most common forms of plagiarism are:
cut / copy and pasted material from the Web
copying the work of another student (past or present) including essay material, laboratory data or computer source code
copying course material or lecture notes
copying material out of a textbook or journal
You can help avoid accidental plagiarism through the proper attribution of source material (i.e. correct referencing). Always make sure you take time to reference accurately and don’t be afraid to ask for help!
There are a number of college resources available to help you understand plagiarism and how to avoid it. The Academic Support Team provide useful and interactive guides on how to understand and avoid plagiarism. See the section ‘Study Resources’ on their web pages. The Library also has a self study course IS226 Introduction to Referencing, Citing and Biliographies course which will get you started.
Correct referencing to avoid plagiarism
Through the use of correct referencing you can avoid ‘accidental plagiarism’. Referencing, also referred to a ‘citing’, is the process of adding ‘references’ (or ‘citations’) an a ‘bibliography’ within your course work. A reference is a clearly identified ‘note’ that states that you are referring to someone else’s work and what the work is that you are referring to.
Referencing must be carried out in a specific ‘style’ as required by the School. The School of Management uses a style of referencing called Harvard. The Harvard Referencing Summary Sheet from Judge Business School is a useful guide which will help you with both your in text citations and bibliography.
Piratical endeavours can be tiring, and at the end of a swashbuckling day what better than a romp upon the seven seas with Captain Jack Sparrow himself – DVD heaven?
You also need to answer the following two questions on your answer sheet:
The Easter eggs have been eaten and the clocks have changed. This must mean the run up to the exam period has started and people are revising all over the college.
There are also lots of tools which can help your organise your revision.
Braineos – Allows you to create flashcards and games to help recall.
Evernote – you can use this to keep track of your notes as it has a great search function so you can search for notes on a subject. You can also create check lists to keep yourself organised.
Mind mapping – There are several tools, both free and paid for available. Here are a few:
Popplet – allows you to add images, video and links.
Endnote Web a really useful tool for collaborative work as it has the ability to share groups of citations with other people . As long as both you and the person with which you want to share a group of citations have Endnote Web accounts, sharing citations is very easy. To register for Endnote Web see this post.
The instructions for sharing groups of citations are below.
1) Click on the Organize tab
2) Click the Manage Sharing button next to the group you want to share
3) Click the Start sharing this group link
4) A new window will open. Enter the email address of the person(s) you want to share the group of citations with (Note: the email address you enter needs to be the same one that the person you are going to share with has associated with his/her own Endnote Web account). Select either Read only or Read & Write privileges. Click the Applybutton and then the Close window link
5) To review your sharing settings. Click on the Organize tab at the top of the page. Check the box in the Share column next to the group you want to share
Note: Once you have shared a group you will see an icon next to groups you have shared on the My References page indicating it is a group you are sharing with others
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.
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.
From the Settings Page click on Library links from the left hand side
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.
Check both boxes next to Senate House Libraries – Available at Senate House and University of London Senate House – Full Text @ My Library.
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
With many students thinking about dissertations it seemed a good time to remind you about Senate House Library. This amazing resource is open to all students and provides many excellent resources for all disciplines.
You will also find many journals that will be relevant for your studies. If you find the Royal Holloway Library Service don’t subscribe to a journal or our subscription doesn’t cover the years you require then you should also check the Senate House catalogue.
Print Resources
You can access the print collections of Senate House by visiting them in central London. You can borrow books and return them to the drop box on campus at the University of London Depository (Building 39 on campus map). The drop box is located just outside the main entrance at the top of the stairs and there are a few things to note:
The box is open 24/7
Items deposited will be taken off your account on the same working day
Fines money cannot be taken at the Depository, and nor can fines disputes be dealt with there