How to Find Politics and IR resources

The Sir Duncan Rice Library is on the west-side of campus off Bedford Road – you can’t miss it, it is the huge, stripy, glass building! Anyone can visit the Sir Duncan Rice Library but as a student you will need your University ID card to get in and borrow items. 

Our opening hours vary depending on the time in the academic year – full details are at: http://bit.ly/TSDRL_opening-hours

Undergraduates and taught Postgraduates can borrow up to 20 items, Research students can borrow up to 40. If you are an on campus student you will need your ID card and to set up a PIN to allow you to use the self-issue kiosks (these are like self-serve at the supermarket!). Details of how to set up a PIN are emailed out at the start of the first semester or you can email the Subject Team at library@abdn.ac.uk 

There are many different loan periods depending on the demand on an item from Heavy Demand (overnight), right through to full academic year. All loans are subject to recall which means you may be asked to return items before the original due date. You can find out about borrowing, loans and recalls at: https://bit.ly/3hoFYgm

As noted above we use Dewey Decimal to order our materials and Floors 3-7 are where we hold these. The Entrance or Ground floor is where you will find the café and the Welcome Desk as well as the returns area and the main swipe gates into the library. Floor 1 has the main issue desk, heavy demand area and various different study zones. Floor 2 has the main computer classrooms and the hard copy periodicals. Each of the ‘collection’ floors has various types of study space including silent study rooms, study desk, PCs and comfy seating. You will also find an enquiry point on these floors where you can ask for help finding that book you really need! You can find out more about the various types of study space and more detail about how we organise the collections floors can be found in our library guides. The Floor 6 guide for the Social Sciences and Education and others can be found on our Library guides page. 

In order to find your reading you should use our Resource Discovery tool which is called Primo. It allows you to search by title, author or even subject in order to find the e-link or the shelf location. Log in to Primo, click on advanced (to give you a really good search!) and then try one of the following:

•    The Books+ tab lists the thousands of titles we have full immediate e-access to
•    The Articles+ tab details thousands of articles, book reviews and more

Note, you won’t see these options in the Basic search screen you see when you first go to Primo.

There is a handy guide all about Primo. We have access to millions of items, some are in e-format, some are physical and held in one of our on campus libraries, but some are held in our store located a few miles away. Primo tells you where and how to access an item – anything not on campus or in e-format can be ‘requested’ using the link in Primo.

You may also find the Taylor Library with its European Documentation Centre (EDC) and Official Publications (UK and Scotland) useful. See our other library guides: Official Publications Collection guide and European Documentation Centre guide 

Radio Free Europe https://www.rferl.org has a mission to promote democratic values and institutions and advance human rights including by reporting the news in countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established. These pages give some really useful information.

The University of California Berkeley Library has created this wonderful list of open access resources such as journals and images from across The Balkans, Central and Eastern Europe, https://guides.lib.berkeley.edu/c.php?g=386223&p=2620163

The Asian Regional Open Access Survey from 2017 (https://www.coar-repositories.org/files/Asia-OA-survey-results-final.pdf) gives lots of detail of how to access various OA resources such as theses and journals from institutions across the region.

CyberOrient https://cyberorient.net/#  is a semi-annual interdisciplinary OA journal published by the American Anthropological Association, the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, and the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies of Lund University. CyberOrient presents original, peer-reviewed articles, comments and books reviews on the online representation of any aspect of Middle Eastern cultures, Islam, the imagined “Orient” and the use and impact of the internet and new media in the Middle East and Islamic countries.

Arabic Books Online http://dlib.nyu.edu/aco/ is a publicly available digital library of public domain Arabic language content. ACO currently provides digital access to 17,170 volumes across 10,110 subjects drawn from rich Arabic collections of distinguished research libraries.

AMELICA is a portal of open access journals: http://amelica.org/index.php/en/home/ 

REDALYC is a bibliographic database and index of open access journals: https://www.redalyc.org

LATININDEX  is a bibliographic database and index: https://www.latindex.org/latindex/inicio?lang=en 

African Journals Online (AJOL) https://www.ajol.info/index.php/ajol is a collection of OA and paid for journals. It is the world's largest and preeminent platform of African-published scholarly journals. AJOL is a Non-Profit Organisation that (since 1998) works to increase global & continental online access, awareness, quality & use of African-published, peer-reviewed research.

Africa Portal https://www.africaportal.org is a research repository and expert analysis hub on African affairs. This open-access research repository holds over 9 000 reports, occasional papers and policy briefs which are available for free, full-text download. 

First thing’s first – switch off EVERYTHING! That means no Insta, no email, no phone, nothing. Social media and email are massively distracting. You need to get in the ‘reading zone’. Find a comfortable, quiet space where you can sit with your device uninterrupted by anything and anyone. This is really hard to achieve but is really important to staying on point.

Next thing is related to the first – only look at one book or reading at a time. When you become more fluent at reading academic texts you can start to dip in and out of multiple items at a time, but for now we will concentrate on one text. 

You now need to consider what is it you are looking for? What questions are you hoped will be answered by reading this ebook? Make a note of your questions – you may find it easier to put them in a table, or in a list format. Do whatever works best for you.

Who has written the text you are reading? Has it been recommended by your Lecturer? Why? Is the author stating fact or opinion? Can you see similarities and parallels with your own ideas, practice or experience? If not, why not? It is not wrong to disagree with an author, you just have to be able to say why and back this up. Use the four ‘Ws’: Who? What? Where? Why? to help you work out if the author is credible this is sometimes called the CRAAP Test Currency Relevancy Authority Accuracy Purpose -  Do they have the knowledge and experience to be writing about this area?

Remember to always keep a note of the author, publisher, year of publication, title etc. of what you are reading. Then note the key points, your own comments and any questions raised. Create your own table or list – whatever works for you. This will form the basis of your assignment.