Research Skills and Resources

In addition to the usual resources and services, the University Library offers particular services in support of Faculty staff and postgraduate researchers. Make an appointment with your Faculty Librarian, Lindsey Fratus for advice on the best strategies for efficient and effective information access including advice on literature searches, research techniques and the most useful databases for your research.

The library subscribes to many online databases and frequently provides access to other databases on a trial basis. We encourage you to explore the databases on trial and welcome your comments on them. Many of our databases provide an alerting service which will help you keep up-to-date with the current literature in your area of research. As new journal articles, books, and websites are published and added to the database, you are automatically notified of the updates via your current awareness profile.

By using EndNote you can make writing academic papers simpler and easier, not only by saving time, but also by ensuring consistency across citations. EndNote allows you to create your own mini-library of references (including summary notes) relating to your thesis, and then lets you automatically format citations and bibliographies for your thesis or other publications. The Library conducts classes in EndNote, or, you may prefer to explore on your own by downloading a copy of our training manual.

Visit the University Library's training page to see what other classes might be useful. For example SkillBuilder, which is a web-based learning system currently offering over 340 courses in IT (Information Technology), PC, management, interpersonal and professional development skills training.

You can borrow material from other libraries (local and international) by lodging a request with Interlibrary Services.

We can help you find information on theses - how to find University of Newcastle theses in our catalogue, NEWCAT, how to obtain a thesis from elsewhere, or just to see what has been published both in Australia and Internationally. We can even suggest some books you might find helpful on writing a thesis.

The Australian Digital Thesis Program (ADT) is a national collaborative program which aims to establish a distributed database of digital versions of theses produced by postgraduate research students at Australian universities. You may wish to add your thesis to the database when it is finished.