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OTH2110 - Finding and Using Research: Home

Welcome!

This site has some activities I think you will find helpful in planning and writing your research proposal. These explore the variety of academic literature you may come across and give you some hints and tips to help you explore and identify relevant research from the abstracts. 

  1. Keywords: This online activity is designed to help you explore keywords around your topic so that you can develop a literature search strategy. You will use the keywords and ideas developed in this tutorial to help you find research for your dissertation.

  2. Understanding Abstracts: This online activity is designed to help you understand and evaluate journal article abstracts to focus reading and research on the most relevant resources. It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.
  3. Understanding Academic Sources: This tutorial is designed to help you understand the main types of academic literature and how you can use them in your academic work. Knowing which type of literature to look at for the information you need will make your research more effective and save you time. This tutorial will take approximately 15 minutes to complete.

Keywords

To work through the tutorial, use the arrows to progress through the tutorial. 

Understanding Abstracts (15 minutes):

To work through the tutorial, use the arrows to progress through the tutorial. 

Understanding Academic Sources (15 minutes):

To work through the tutorial, use the arrows to progress through the tutorial. 

How can I find relevant literature to support my work?

NELSON (Northampton Electronic Library Search ONline)

You can use NELSON to search the library’s books, e-books, e-journals, videos and more. Sign-in with your University login to access the full-text. If the item is available electronically you’ll see a link to the full-text online. If the content is available in print, you’ll see a shelfmark letting you know where to find the book on the shelf.

If you want to find subject specific resources, you can also search the specialist databases directly. You’ll find these listed under the Databases tab on NELSON and most allow you to sign-in using your University login. You can also use the links below to go directly to the databases that you'll find relevant to your course.

Introduction

These short videos have been created to help you access and use the databases to search for relevant information for your assignments. Descriptions about what the databases cover and links to access them are available on the A-Z Database list.

Click on the information icon next to the title of the video, to find out more about what the video demonstrates.

Videos: searching the databases

Useful Databases