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Social Sciences

Books and Ebooks

The most efficient and effective way of finding books and eBooks in the library is to use the library catalogue, from which you can:

  • Search by author and/or title 
  • Search by topic 
  • To find only eBooks refine your search results to "Online Resources"
  • Place reservations for any books on loan to another reader.
  • Read eBooks online or download to read off-line.   

Print Loan Entitlements 

All Solent students and staff can borrow up to 25 items.

eBooks do not count towards the number of items you can borrow 

 

Watch the video below to get the most out of the library catalogue

Journal Articles

 

SearchingJournals are collections of academic articles, mostly peer reviewed and therefore of good quality for academic research. Peer reviewed means that the articles have gone through a quality checking process by other researchers or academics before publication so you can be sure that the information is reliable.   Articles are often the reported outcomes of research so tend to be on a discrete topic.  They take much less time to publish than books although the peer review process can slow publication down.  

Magazines and the professional press are mostly not peer reviewed and may not be the best source of information for you to use. 

You can find journal articles in the articles tab on the library catalogue, the databases or even Google Scholar.  The Library has very few printed journals, most are online.

You may find that your lecturer has provided links to key articles in the Reading Lists on your unit pages on SOL.  But there is nothing to stop you researching more using the databases or articles tab - it could be the way to even better marks!

Using References

Once you have found an article make use of the work the author has put in - follow in their footsteps.   Use the references he or she used in their research to generate further reading for you to follow up - but bear in mind they will be older than the original article.  

Some databases will indicate where an article has been used in subsequent research - follow them up as well. 

Google Scholar indicates where articles have been cited (used) by other researchers, allowing you to click and see these later works.   

Murder Mystery Quiz

Try to find out the identity of the culprit.  All the alibis can be verified (or otherwise!) using the library catalogue

Click on the Crime Scene image to start your investigations 
Crime Scene

 Photo: Tex Texin

Quiz - Test your knowledge of this section