Intute: For Access to the Best Web Resources for Education & Research

If you've not tried out the Intute service yet you might find it worth taking a look. Intute is a free online service providing access to the very best web resources for education and research. The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners with subject specialists selecting and evaluating the websites in the Intute database and writing high quality descriptions of the resources.

Intute provides:

1. Specialist subject-specific search engines which search within a database of pre-selected websites that have been evaluated by subject specialists. Try out the Social Sciences search, the Health & Sciences search, or the Science & Technology search.
2. Some very useful subject-specific internet tutorials in the Virtual Training Suite. These can help you learn how to get the best from the web for your education and research. These include: Business Manager, Health & Social Care, Medicine, and ICT.

Take a look when you get a chance. You might find Intute a very useful tool to use in your information research.

Information Literacy Resource (ILR) now on Online Library Web Pages

Need help with finding, evaluating and organising information for your research? Well look no further! The Information Literacy Resource (ILR) from the Library has been added to the Online Library web site whilst we migrate from the Embanet VLE to Blackboard VLE. It is also still available in Embanet - you'll find it with your modules in a folder called 'Information Literacy'.

It is recommended that you work through the Information Literacy Resource as soon as possible after registering for your Managed Windows Service (MWS) username and password, and certainly before you start your dissertation.

If you have any questions please ask me: Stephanie Allen at onlinelibrarian@liverpool.ac.uk

Is the Journal you're using Peer-reviewed?

You will often be told in the course of your studies that you should be using scholarly, peer-reviewed journals, but how do you know that the journal you are using is?

A publication is considered to be scholarly if:

1. It is authored by academics for a target audience that is mainly academic
2. The printed format isn’t usually a glossy magazine
3. It is published by a recognised society with academic goals and missions

Most quality scholarly journals are peer-reviewed. This means that a second opinion by experts in the field is sought before an article is accepted for publication. Changes are often made in response to critical comments from reviewers.

There is a useful guide from the University of Maryland University College that explains about the different types of journals available.

You may also find Ulrich’s Periodicals Directory available from the Online Library a very useful tool for checking whether a journal is peer-reviewed. This will enable you to search for a journal title and find out whether it has been defined as a peer-reviewed (scholarly) journal. This is easy to do - see this FAQ for more details of how to do this.

New Blackboard Login Link in University Portal

The University portal for online students and staff now includes a link to the Blackboard login screen. The link is located to the right of the screen in the 'Quick Links' section.

Email Change to onlinelibrarian@liverpool.ac.uk

Just to let everyone know that I have changed my email contact address to:

onlinelibrarian@liverpool.ac.uk

The Online_Librarian@embanet.com email address will still be active for a while yet, but please start using the onlinelibrarian@liverpool.ac.uk

Or, of course you can also always chat with me on this blog if I'm online :-)

Thanks

Stephanie Allen, Online Librarian