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International STUDENTS
 

Welcome to Newman University College library! We hope you enjoy your experience as a student at Newman.

The library staff are here to help you find the information and books you need for your studies.All the books and printed journals are available for you to look at on the shelves, and you will need to use the library catalogue to find them.  For more information please see the library guide on finding books .If you have any problems finding what you need, you can ask any of the library staff for help.

We have several books on English grammar and a selection of bilingual dictionaries. You may find he following shelfmarks useful:

423 – English dictionaries
425 – English grammar and use
428.24 – English as a second language

433 – German-English dictionaries
443.21 – French-English dictionaries
453 – Italian-English dictionaries
463.21 – Spanish-English dictionaries
469.321 – Portuguese-English dictionaries
489.3 – Greek-English dictionaries
491.73 – Russian-English dictionaries
495.1 – Chinese-English dictionaries

Referencing

Correct bibliographic referencing is important; here at Newman we use the Harvard method. You can use the online guide to get more information and to see some examples of referencing.

Electronic resources

Newman subscribes to a range of electronic resources, links can be found on the electronic resources page

A lot of these databases and online journals have various functions which allow you to change the language selection, below is a selection of them:

British Humanities Index – can change the language to French and Spanish

Educational Research Abstracts (ERA) – Sociology of Education and Informaworld – Taylor and Francis – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ’s) can be changed to French, Spanish and Chinese

Ingenta Connect – Help pages can be changed to Chinese

JSTOR – can be changed to Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, German, French, Russian, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and Korean

Oxford Journals – can be changed to Chinese and Japanese

Periodical Archive Online – can be changed to French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian

Springerlink – can be changed to German, French, Spanish, Russian and Arabic

 

As well as online databases and journals there are a number of online reference services, one which you may find useful is Oxford Reference Online. This gives access to English dictionaries and thesauri and English Language reference such as The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar and The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language.

It also gives access to bilingual dictionaries, which includes English to Spanish, French, German, Irish, Italian, Latin and Welsh. There are also specialist Business dictionaries in Spanish and French.

Glossary

There are certain words you will see or hear when using the library. Below is a guide to help you translate what these words mean. The words in bold mean their definition is also included elsewhere in the glossary.   

  • Abstract – A summary of a journal article
  • Article – A piece of writing published in a newspaper or journal
  • Athens – A password system which gives you access to electronic resources. Your Athens username and password is the same as your normal log in username and password
  • Bibliographic database – A searchable database of references for journal articles which contains bibliographic details of the articles such as author, title, publisher etc. There will sometimes be an abstract too
  • Bibliography – A list of books and articles which has been used in a piece of written work
  • Catalogue – A database which lists all the books, journals and other items available in the library. It tells you where it is located, whether it is out on loan and when an item is due back
  • Citation – A reference to a particular source which has been used in a piece of work. There is specific ways of doing citations which are called referencing styles. At Newman we use the Harvard system
  • Due date – The date by which a book must be returned to the library or renewed, this date will be stamped on the label inside the book. If you do not return or renew your book by the due date you will get a fine
  • E-book – An electronic version of a book, these can be accessed from the electronic resources page of the library webpage
  • E-journal – An electronic version of a journal giving full-text access to journal articles, these can be accessed from the electronic resources section of the website
  • Fine – A charge you have to pay if you return an item to the library after the due date
  • Holdings – The word used in the catalogue to show what volumes of a journal are available in the library
  • Inter library loan – If Newman does not have a particular book or journal article you can request to borrow it from another library
  • Journal – An academic magazine published at regular intervals which contains scholarly information and research
  • Keyword – A keyword is a word used to describe the subject you are researching. You should use keywords when searching the library catalogue and bibliographic databases
  • Reference item – Some items in the library, such as dictionaries are ‘reference only’ and cannot be taken out of the library
  • Renew – You can extend the amount of time you have an item out on loan by renewing it, either by coming into the library, telephoning or through the online catalogue
  • Reservation – If all the copies of an item are out on loan you can make a reservation. This is done through the library catalogue and you will receive an email when the item is back in the library
  • Shelfmark – This is the number you need to locate a book on the shelves, books on similar subjects are shelved together
  • Short loan – This is a collection of high demand books that are available for a two hour loan period. They are kept in a separate section of the library
  • Stack – Some of our older print journals are kept in a stack rather than on the shelves. It will tell you on the library catalogue if the journal issue is in the stack. You will need to ask a member of library staff to access these for you

Other resources

Birmingham public library services offer resources which may be useful for you, including resources to help with learning English grammar and books and newspapers in different languages including Chinese, Hindi, Vietnamese and Urdu.

Anyone who lives, works or studies in Birmingham can join the public libraries.

Further help

Any one of our members of staff will be able to help with queries, however the Librarian with responsibility for International Education is Lydia Gibbs, who can be contacted by email – lydia.gibbs@newman.ac.uk or by telephone – 0121 476 1181 Ext. 2413.