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Department of Geography

 

Accessing online resources remotely

Online resources for Geographers

The following websites should prove helpful for your studies:

Physical Sciences: study skills – University library Libguides. Studying at university involves building on your existing skills and developing new ones. Cambridge University Libraries are here to support you with your studies and the page covers some of the essential skills you need together with top tips.

Resources for remote research in Human Geography: originally designed (and curated by Dr Antonio Ferraz-de-Oliveira) to support second year undergraduates who are rapidly reformulating their dissertation plans for the summer. This project evolved into something quite substantial, and has been welcomed by PhD students and colleagues, who are also finding the need to revise and revisit research plans. An accompanying online reading list is now available in support of this project.

UL dashboard: this comprehensive webpage lists all the services that the UL and affiliated libraries are delivering to help you continue to keep studying and researching, including focused FAQs.

Libguides: suitable for all students, these user-friendly guides link you to lots of useful information provided by University of Cambridge Libraries on finding electronic resources, such as ebooks and ejournals, digital collections and databases, alongside study skills such as referencing.

Geography Libguide: this subject specific guide will be updated with more content relevant to your studies – please do let us know what information would be most helpful to you on here as Geographers, so we can best tailor it to your study needs.

Wolfson College Academic Skills: this is an excellent resource on finding, managing and using information relating to your studies.

Geography Library Twitter account will provide the latest messages relating to our library services, so please do check in regularly.

Geography eBooks are now listed on the iDiscover catalogue page. To search ebooks, please select the search filter ‘ebook’.

Geography eBooks listing

Handy information for accessing eresources remotely

Below are some useful hints and tips on how access online library materials (with thanks to the Chemistry Library):

Remote access to online resources (i.e. journal articles, databases, ebooks)

  • You should be able to access these remotely using your Raven login.
  • We strongly recommend that you use iDiscover in the first instance to find the online resources you need, rather than trying to get access to content directly on a publisher website for example, which will not recognise you as a being member of the University.
  • Wherever you click on a green ‘Online access’ link in your results on iDiscover (whether it is to an article, ebook or database) you will be taken to the Raven authentication page. Once you have signed in, you will stay signed in until you close the browser window.
  • If you see the words ‘Online access restricted to designated PCs in the UL and most Faculty and Departmental Libraries’, you will not be able to access the resources at this time.
  • Electronic legal deposit books, journals and web content cannot be made available beyond the physical premises of Cambridge University Libraries under the terms of current legal deposit legislation. This can only be changed by government through new legislation.
  • If students and academic staff require access to material that is only held by the Library as an electronic legal deposit item we will try to obtain it electronically with a wider license so that it is accessible off-campus via Raven; this will be on a case-by-case basis. Please use this form to recommend book and journal titles.

Online journals

  • In iDiscover, click on the button for ‘Articles and online resources’ and enter your search term in the box (journal article or journal title), then click on the magnifying glass icon to perform the search.
  • You can also click on the ‘E-journal Search’ link at the top of the page to search for online journals by title.
  • In either case, click on the green ‘Online access’ link to get access via your Raven account.

Top Tip – install the LeanLibrary plugin

Lean Library delivers to your desktop the article or chapter you want seamlessly if Cambridge University Libraries provide subscription access, regardless where you are accessing from (on or off campus).

Top Tip – install the Google Scholar Button

When you search Google Scholar for articles, ‘ejournals@cambridge’ links are displayed that will take you to the full-text (if the University has a subscription).

Top Tip – install Open Access Browser Plugins

A third to a half of articles have an Open Access version, but finding them can be a challenge. Save time with these easy-to-install OA discovery tools that search repositories, preprint servers, etc. for you.

Online databases

  • In iDiscover, click on the ‘Databases A-Z’ link at the top of the page to find and access databases the University subscribes to. You can refine it by subject e.g. Geography.

Ebooks

  • There are thousands of these available in iDiscover. Whenever you do a search for a book and there is an online version there will be a separate record for it. Click on the green ‘Online access’ link to get access via your Raven account.
  • If there isn’t an electronic version of a book you really need it may be possible for us to buy these quickly and make them available via iDiscover – ask us by email [library@geog.cam.ac.uk].

Is the book chapter or journal article you need not available anywhere in Cambridge?

You can currently make requests for Inter-Library Loans (for an additional charge) through the Moore Library.

This depends, however, on whether the British Library remains open or not. Please check with the Moore Library about the current level of service if you are interested in using this service.