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The section will give you information about navigating the UCA library to find material relevant to your studies.

The library has three main areas in which to search: the main catalogue, in which you will find principally digital books; the journals collection and databases.

For information on accessing the library, including setting up your UCA account, please see our section Accessing UCA Library

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You can search the main catalogue using keywords, or a 'search statement' combining keywords.

Click on the image above to see an example of a simple search.

On left of the screen are filters to narrow the search. You can filter by type of content, date of publication, subject classification, region published among other factors.

On the right are further suggestions to explore the library.

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You can search the Database List by keyword, by subject and by type.

'Type' describes the kind of material held in the database, such as statistics, audio or images.

Useful subject categories for LCCM students could be Music or Business & Management.

Some examples of useful databases are Music Periodicals Database (for writing about music); Statista (for business data, including music industry data) and JSTOR (for a wider range of academic articles).

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The library holds a wide range of journals - academic, industry-facing and for the general reader.

You can search the collection by title, and can browse titles by subject category and publishing organisation.

If you are looking for a specific publication of course use the title search. Otherwise, it is a good idea to browse by subject and see what you find.

Publications include Journal of Hip Hop Studies, Popular Music and Society and Metal Music Studies as well as non-academic journals such as Rolling Stone and Billboard.

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You can focus your library search by creating a targeted 'search statement'. You can do this directly into a search field, or by using the advanced search function.

First, ask 'what am I searching for?':

What is your topic? What question are you asking?​

Think of keywords relevant to your topic ​

Broaden your search using similar words

Then filter out less useful results and avoid excluding more useful results​ by using these techniques:

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Inverted commas around two or more words ask the system to search for those words in that order. For example: “northern soul”, “music industry”, “fast food”​

AND, OR, NOT are used - capitalised - to combine or exclude words. For example: music AND industry; industry OR business

Truncation: putting an asterisk* ​at the end of a word or part-word includes any word beginning in exactly this way:​ musi* > music, musical, musician

Brackets ​search for (everything within them)​.For example: music AND (industry OR business)

Often an advanced search function is available which makes it simple to apply most of these tools - but you can also create a complete search statement in the basic search field.

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How do we evaluate whether information sources we have found are reliable? Here are some questions to help you.

Relevance

Ask is the content of the source relevant to the topic you’re researching?

Academic level

If the source needs to be of an academic quality, is it suitable for degree-level research?

Authority

Ask who wrote the source? What are their qualifications and what expertise and knowledge are they bringing to the subject?

At degree level you should mostly be looking for people with professional qualifications (i.e. a qualified journalist) or academic status (professors, researchers).

Reliability

What perspective or position does the author have?

Does the writing present different points of view ?

Is evidence provided (presenting evidence is important for establishing claims and supporting an argument)?

Currency

When is the work written or published?

If you need up to date information, make sure you are accessing recent sources.

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