Library Help: Teaching and learning

The Library provides a number of resources to help you with your research. The My Learning Essentials workshops and online resources give introductory guidance on a range of information literacy skills including academic writing, critical reading and database searching.

There are guides introducing searching skills on the My Learning Essentials pages. These links are examples of some core resources you may find useful:

• Getting started with subject databases
• Getting started with literature reviews
• Evaluating sources of information
• Using operators within your search
• Critical appraisal for medical and health sciences

The Systematic Review Guide and the Specialist Library Support pages for Advanced Searching give more in-depth guidance on how to use many of the medical and human sciences database platforms. The specific databases for your subject discipline can be found on the library’s subject guides on the databases page.

The Systematic Review Guide is primarily aimed at postgraduate researchers. However, the guide also contains useful introductory information to the research process and, in particular, the practice of systematic searching. The guide also contains links to other useful websites which may answer a lot of your questions.

The Specialist Library Support pages for Advanced Searching give detailed instruction on how to use specific databases platforms and the search tools within them.

The Library also holds regular Drop-In sessions. The Library staff can give advice on a range of issues including how to begin searching databases and conduct literature searches etc.

If you want help from us and the Drop-Ins do not fit in with your timetable, please send us further details of what you require help with, as detailed above via the yellow Ask A Question boxes found on the subject pages. This enables us to assign your query to the most appropriate person and an appointment can be arranged for a mutually convenient time.

If you are using the Ovid and EBSCO database platforms you can send your searches directly to us for advice by using the “Ask A Librarian” links (at the top right of the database screens)

You can also send queries about your searches directly to our email.