Welcome to St George’s to all our new students and welcome back to everyone who is returning to their studies with us. After the flurry of Freshers Week and the first weeks of classes, now is a good time to start familiarising yourself with the library’s resources and the services we offer.
We are here to help you and support you in your studies.
Each guide includes information on which resources we recommend for your subject, including revision and e-learning resources and databases, if you are doing complex literature searches. In the guide, you can also find information on how to reference correctly and who to contact to get further help. A little tip: it’s generally a good idea to email liaison@sgul.ac.uk for help with finding information and referencing.
On Canvas you can find a range of self-directed library research based tutorials that you can take at your own pace when you are ready. They each include some videos, explanations and short quizzes so you can test your knowledge as you go along.
Have you ever wondered how to Google like a librarian? Or how to select the best-quality information for your assignments? Give our Finding and Evaluating Information tutorial a go.
If you need to use Harvard referencing in your assignments (and it is very likely that you do as it is the institutional referencing style), you will find our Referencing Essentials tutorial helpful. It covers the basics of referencing, explains what in-text citations and references consist of and guides you through the reference layout of the most commonly used resources.
Once you have completed the tutorial, why don’t you take our referencing quiz to see how well you can apply Harvard referencing? A little tip: you might find our Cite Them Right video helpful to answer the questions.
Liaison Librarians
We have a brand-new service this year! There is an expert ‘on-call’ librarian available every weekday between 10am-2pm you can talk to in person about any research or referencing concerns. All you need to do is let us know at the library helpdesk and we’ll take it from there.
Every subject at St George’s has a specialist librarian, in fact librarians, so you are sure to get the specialist support you need for what you are studying. You can find out who your librarians are on your subject’s libguide.
You can also email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk if you’d like any help with research, systematic literature searches, finding information in Hunter, referencing or RefWorks. For more in-depth enquiries we can make an appointment with you, either online or in person, depending on availability.
Reading for pleasure collection
Regular breaks from studying and revision are important, which is where our collection of fiction, poetry and popular non-fiction comes in. Not all our books are medical and healthcare-related textbooks. We have a range of books you might expect to find in a public library!
The Library also supports the Big Read. This is an exciting shared reading project, which is now in its third year at St George’s. We have all the shortlisted books from the last years, going back to the project’s origins at Kingston University, and of course all the winners, in the library available for you to borrow. You can find the Big Read books listed here.
Academic skills
Last but not least, you might be looking for help with academic skills, such as essay writing, revision skills or note taking. You can find information on these topics and many more on the Study+ page on Canvas.
You can also get one-to-one support by booking an appointment with the Academic Success Team. You need to book via the Study+ page on Canvas. Appointments can be in person or online.
We hope you find these resources will support you in your assignments, dissertations and learning. Don’t hesitate to email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk with you
Today, we are pleased to announce the launch of our new ‘On-Call Librarian service’ where library users can get on the spot help with finding information and using library resources. No need to book, just come to the library helpdesk between the hours of 10am and 2pm, Monday to Friday and ask to speak to a librarian for help with literature searching, referencing and more. This service replaces our now closed Research Enquiries desk – we hope you like it- email your feedback to library@sgul.ac.uk
This post has been written by Liz Stovold, Research Data Support Manager and Information Specialist, Cochrane Airways.
A data management plan (DMP) is an important part of a research project and many funders require a DMP as part of a research proposal. A DMP will typically cover issues such as data collection, format, storage, security, documentation, discoverability, reuse, sharing, retention and preservation. Thinking through these issues before embarking on your research will help to improve the organisation of your data throughout the lifecycle of your research and save you time in the long run.
To help you with writing your data management plan, St George’s subscribes to DMPonline – a tool provided by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC). To access DMPonline you simply need to log in with your St George’s credentials:
From the dashboard, click on ‘create plan’ and off you go!
Detailed guidance is available in the help tab, together with links to a wealth of resources on data management planning and examples of data management plans. You can also look at publicly shared DMPs from the reference tab:
Using DMPOnline to write your DMP offers a number of benefits:
access to funder specific templates
built-in guidance for each section of the plan
invite your collaborators to join the plan
add comments for your collaborators
option to request feedback on your plan from the SGUL Research Data Management Service
export your plan in a variety of formats including MS Word and PDF
option to keep your plan private, share with SGUL DMPOnline users, or share publicly
The recent weather has let us know that summer is finally upon us, and with the last of our student groups finishing exams in the next few days, we’re sure that many people’s thoughts are now turning to the summer holiday. Below we’ve highlighted a small selection of our services and resources that we hope will be helpful to you over the coming months, whether you’re studying or taking a moment to relax.
E-books
Hunter now gives access to over 5000 e-books to help with your studies, and this collection is continuing to grow. So whatever the topic of your assignment or research, it’s increasingly likely that you’ll find e-books that can help.
To find e-books, select Books and more from the dropdown box when you search in Hunter. Then choose Online Resources from the filter options on the left to limit your results to e-books only.
View our YouTube video for a quick reminder of how to access e-books (and other online resources) from off-campus using your SGUL username and password.
Resetting your SGUL password
If your SGUL password has expired, or if you’ve forgotten it, you can reset it here as long as you’ve previously registered an alternate email address. If you haven’t registered an alternate adress, contact the Student Life Centre to set one up.
If you have problems resetting you password, email ITAV@sgul.ac.uk.
Reading for Pleasure
If you’ve been in the library recently, you may have spotted our Summer Reading display filled with books from our growing collection of fiction, poetry and contemporary non-fiction. Coming soon will be another reading for pleasure display, this one using a new collection of uplifting titles chosen by NHS staff in collaboration with The Reading Agency. Find out which titles will be available at The Reading Agency’s website here.
Please help yourself to anything from the book display using the nearby self-issue machines.
Items in these collections are mostly print books only, so if you’re heading away from SGUL for the summer and are thinking of picking up a book or two, remember to do this before you go.
Research support in summer
Believe it or not, summer is a busy time for your liaison librarians as we are preparing for the next academic year, developing and updating training sessions, recording videos, preparing inductions and getting new resources and tools ready for all come the autumn. Nevertheless, we will be available all summer to help students, researchers and academics. We can help with searching Hunter, our library catalogue, using databases to do complexes searches and show you how to make the most of RefWorks, the reference management software at St George’s. Email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk for help. If you require more in-depth support, we can schedule an online appointment with you.
In the upcoming months we will again be offering a variety of library skills training sessions. There are different sessions suitable for your level of expertise or year of study, for students, academics and NHS staff.
Below you can find out more about the different training sessions we offer and the dates for these sessions. To book, please visit LibCal and register for the session you would like to attend. These sessions are all held online, via Microsoft Teams.
Don’t forget, we also continue to run our Library Research online drop-ins, Monday to Friday 12-1pm. At our drop-ins we can help you with getting started with finding information for your assignment, doing in-depth literature searching projects and referencing enquiries.
Visit our website to find out more or email liaison@sgul.ac.uk.
Training sessions on offer
My Learning Essentials: Hunter & Harvard
Wednesday 26th May, 1-2pm Tuesday 22nd June, 1-2pm
This session is suitable for SGUL or FHSCE undergraduate or postgraduate students who have specific referencing or literature searching enquiries relating to their assignments. You will be able to discuss your query with the librarian, and receive guidance on how to effectively use Hunter to find academic books and articles and how to use CiteThemRight to ensure your referencing complies with SGUL’s specific Harvard Referencing Style.
Tuesday 18th May, 11.00-12.30pm Tuesday 15th June, 11-12.30pm
We know databases, like Medline (aka PubMed) and CINAHL, can be daunting, but with a little help and guidance, we are short you will get to grips with them in no time. If you have a longer research project, like a dissertation, or you just want to impress in your assignments, this session is for you. You will learn how to effectively run a literature search in a database relevant to your subject. The sessions are suitable for St George’s and FHSCE staff and students.
In this session, we will introduce you to the reference management software RefWorks. We will show you up to set up an account, add references, manage them and how to use RefWorks Citation Manager (RCM), a Microsoft Word Add-in.
Thursday 20th May, 12.30-1pm Tuesday 15th June, 11-11.30am
Library induction for NHS staff, introducing you to the range of services and resources on offer to those working for St George’s Hospital, Queen Mary’s Hospital and other community-based sites.
Finding top-quality evidence is a priority for health care practitioners. This session will introduce the high-quality resources available to you, as well as provide training in how to use them effectively to support evidence-based clinical practice or decision-making.
The session will cover: The range of evidence-based healthcare resources available, including: NICE Evidence, the Cochrane Library and BMJ Best Practice.
How to use the NHS databases effectively and identify the most appropriate database for your need. This includes how to create and plan a search strategy using subject headings and keywords and how to combine searches and apply limits to focus your results; how to access full-text articles where available or locate articles through St George’s journals page; and how to save your searches and set up alerts.
Systematic Reviews: finding and managing the evidence
Wednesday 28th April, 1-3pm
Tuesday 25th May, 11am-1pm
Thursday 24th June, 11am-1pm
This course will focus on in-depth literature searching for systematic reviewers and how to manage your results. It will provide you with an overview of the systematic review process, the know-how of creating effective search strategies, systematic searching of the literature, managing your results and documenting the search process.
The focus of this blogpost is literature searching, specifically for longer research projects such as dissertations, and it is aimed at St George’s students.
Your expert Liaison Librarians are able to support you with every step of the way so don’t hesitate to get in touch by emailing liaison@sgul.ac.uk. We are able to advise on how to plan and carry out a complex literature search in a variety of databases. We can also recommend which databases are most suitable for your topic.
You can email us for an individual appointment or come to one of our online drop-ins. Monday to Friday between 12-1pm you can chat to a Liaison Librarian directly. Click on the relevant link on the day you want to drop by.
Here we provide tips and tricks, no matter which stage of the process you are currently at.
If you are…
…just getting started
Do a scoping search in Hunter. Even if you already use Hunter to locate books and journal articles in our collection, our Hunter video might teach you another thing or two about how to really make the most of its search functions.
If you aren’t familiar with the planning stage of literature searching or you usually skip this bit to get stuck in straight away, now is a good time to change that. When it comes to dissertations and research projects, you need to be much more systematic in your work, including when you formulate your research question. Have a look at our Canvas unit on this topic. It gives you more information and by the end, you will have a research question ready to start searching with.
If you are worried about how to structure your dissertation or academic writing, you can make an appointment with the Academic Success Centre team. Their details are found on the Study+ section in Canvas. We also have a number of books in our collection which can help with academic writing, including how to approach a literature review, dissertation or research paper. They are listed on our Writing for Assessment Wakelet.
If you need specific software to do your research, such as SPSS, have a look at what is available to you through St George’s University and request it here.
And finally, a little tip on how to get started. If you know of a paper which covers the area you are interested in already, have a look at which articles they reference and perhaps you find some relevant papers in their reference list for your project. While this is not a systematic method, it can help you get started and add to your search strategy (e.g. which alternative terms to use).
…ready for an in-depth literature search
If you are a little overwhelmed by the prospect of doing a complex search in multiple databases (and who can blame you), you need to start by familiarising yourself with how to build a complex search, what alternative terms are and how to include them and how to use advanced search strategies. We have a libguide that takes you through the whole literature searching process. For those of you who are working on a systematic literature review, have a look at our relevant libguide, which highlights what you need to consider to turn your literature review into a systematic literature review. Watch the following videos to find out more about identifying keywords and alternative terms.
We have introductory videos on Ovid (Medline), Ebsco (Cinahl) and Internurse to get you started. Once you have familiarised yourself with the basics, watch our detailed video tutorial on how to search in Ovid/Medline using advanced search techniques.
Have a look at our Databases A-Z list to see which databases are available to you. Your subject guide will tell you which databases are most relevant to your course.
Don’t forget – you can also ask a Liaison Librarian for help by emailing us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk or coming to one of our daily online drop-ins. We can recommend which databases are most suitable for your topic.
We strongly recommend you don’t use reference generators such as Cite This for Me as we find that generally the references produced by such tools are wrong. You end up spending longer correcting and double-checking your references than you would have done writing them from scratch. If you find the resource in Hunter, you will notice a “citation” option for each record. This has been formatted to match the requirements of Harvard Cite Them Right but it is not always correct. Make sure you compare it to Cite Them Right and correct it if necessary.
For a longer project, we encourage you to use reference management software as it helps you to deduplicate your search results, manage your references and create in-text citations and references. At St George’s, we support RefWorks, which is a web-based software. You need your St George’s login to access it and create an account. To get started, have a look at our RefWorks libguide. Additionally, our detailed video tutorial covers everything from how to get started to how to create references and in-text citations from within Microsoft Word.
We can also help you with your references, so if you are unsure about anything please email liaison@sgul.ac.uk or come to our drop-ins.
Getting all your citations and bibliography right can be a daunting prospect – especially if is for a longer research project, an article or your dissertation. In moments like that, it can be helpful to make use of reference management software, which eliminates some of the stress and hassle of referencing correctly.
At St George’s, we support RefWorks, a web-based application which supports you in collecting, storing and managing your references. As part of RefWorks, you can also make use of RefWorks Citation Manager (RCM) which is a Microsoft Word Add-in. With RCM you can create citations and bibliographies within your documents.
While RefWorks is a really useful tool for students and staff at St George’s, it requires learning how to use it before tempting to get started on your references. This is where our new RefWorks video series comes in handy.
RefWorks video series
We have created 9 short videos that guide you through the process of using RefWorks. You can find the entire series on our YouTube channel and on Canvas, as part of our RefWorks unit. If you want to get a quick overview, check out this video.
RefWorks can be a big help in getting your references done quickly, but you will find that there are mistakes in your references. You are responsible for making sure that when you submit your assignment all your citations and your bibliography are correct, so do double-check each reference in line with Cite Them Right, the correct version of Harvard to use at St George’s.
If you are new to referencing, work your way through our referencing unit on Canvas before you start using RefWorks.
Further help
Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us by emailing liaison@sgul.ac.uk with any questions about RefWorks that you might have. While RefWorks is generally straight-forward to use, at times users experiences issues for example with creating an account. We can help with you with that.
If you prefer getting a proper training session on RefWorks, please visit our website to sign up for a session that suits you. Our RefWorks training is part of a number of generic training sessions, including literature searching for your dissertation.
We also have a Libguide on RefWorks and reference management, which gives you a quick overview of what you need to know to sign up and add references to RefWorks. Our Libguide also includes helpful screenshots if you get stuck and information on Legacy RefWorks.
Digital Preservation Day 2020 celebrates the positive impact of digital preservation. The theme ‘Digits: For Good’ focuses this year on the creation and preservation of research and development data used in finding a vaccine for COVID-19. In this post we’ll look into the work we’ve been doing to preserve these records, and also what the archives can tell us of past pandemics. This blogpost has been written by St George’s Archivist Juulia Ahvensalmi, Records Manager Kirsten Hylan and Research Data Support Manager Michelle Harricharan. You can engage with the day and find out more about our work on Twitter at @CollectionsSgul and @sgullibrary and using the hashtags #WDPD2020 and #SGULWDPD2020.
Our COVID-19 story
At St George’s, University of London (SGUL), a specialist health and medical sciences university in South-West London, the Archivist, Research Data Support Manager, and Records Manager have joined forces to advocate for digital preservation.
When it comes to meeting the challenge of preserving our digital materials, we have found that by bringing together staff members from different areas of the University we can utilise different skills and internal networks to achieve our goals.
As part of the work we are undertaking around digital preservation, the team aims to collect all Covid-19 related material produced by SGUL. This includes a variety of documents in a variety of formats, produced by different parts of the university, including
Communications, such as emails, web pages, FAQs, video recordings and social media. These provide evidence of our response to the crisis and our management of it – something that will be both interesting and important to keep for the future. Communications sent out to students, staff, alumni as well as those externally available will tell the story of how St George’s reacted to the pandemic
Governance records, including minutes of meetings. These provide evidence of the conversations and decision-making about the responses and management of the pandemic
Research, including recording the range of Covid-19 research St George’s researchers have been involved in throughout the pandemic as well as our researchers’ incredible work in the national and international media. Research data from these studies are also important to collect and preserve for the long term.
To date we are curating and preserving the items that we aware of, and we have started conversations with departments such as External Relations, Communications and Marketing to identify material we may have missed.
We are conscious of the need to collect the full complement of Covid-19 material as ultimately this material will be an important part of our Archive in years to come and support future research.
Looking back
The majority of the material related to COVID-19 is digital, but that is not the case for most of the material held in the archives (although in the future that is of course likely to change!). The one pandemic most often compared to COVID-19 is the 1918-1919 influenza pandemic, known most commonly (and misleadingly) as the ‘Spanish’ flu, or ‘the Grippe’. Estimates of the number of deaths caused by it vary anywhere from 17 to 100 million people worldwide.
In order to understand more about the current pandemic, and our responses to it, and to learn from our past mistakes, we need to look into the past. How did St George’s, then, respond to this pandemic? Well – the answer is that we don’t really know. The minutes of the Medical School (later SGUL) committee and council make no reference to the pandemic. St George’s Hospital and Medical School Gazette, journal produced by St George’s staff and students between 1892 and 1974, notes in February 1919 that the out-patient department and many wards at the hospital had to be closed as so many nurses were off sick, but the medical school records don’t reveal much more (although St George’s Hospital records, which are held at the London Metropolitan Archives, may hold more information).
St George’s Hospital and Medical School Gazette, Feb 1919. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
Post mortem and case book 1846, PM/1846. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
When we started cataloguing the volumes for 1918 and 1919, we were expecting to find plenty of examples of influenza, and were surprised when, well, there just weren’t that many.
There were, of course, some cases, and many that sound troubling, such as the case of Ada Bell, a soldier’s wife aged 32, who died at St George’s 31 Oct 1918. Her illness was initially diagnosed as pneumonia, but she was brought to the hospital delirious, coughing and suffering from diarrhoea, deafness and shortness of breath. Her cause of death was deemed to be typhoid fever and influenzal bronchopneumonia.
Post mortem case of Ada Bell, [Wife of] Soldier, 32, PM/1918/240. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
As the symptoms were varied, cases were sometimes misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera or typhoid, for instance. Of the overall deaths in those two years at St George’s, influenza cases account for 5.5% of all the cases: the yellow line in the graph below shows cases where influenza was reported to be the cause of death (or, to be more specific, cases in which influenza is mentioned in the post mortem report). We don’t, however, have the admissions registers for the hospitals, so we cannot tell the number of cases overall, only the number of deaths.
There is a relatively large number of ‘unknown’ causes of death during these years as well (shown in turquoise in the graph below) – these are cases for which the records enter no cause of death and no details on the medical case, and they may or may not include some further influenza cases. The graph also shows other respiratory tract diseases (in green) and digestive system diseases (in purple).
Deaths at St George’s Hospital 1918-1919. Source: Post mortem examinations and casebooks, PM, Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
The 1889 influenza
Influenza was of course not confined to these years only. Every so often influenza cases would flare up, and the previous time this happened on a large scale in 1889-90. With our propensity for blaming single countries for viruses, this pandemic is sometimes referred to as Russian flu and, according to some theories, it may have played a part in immunising those who had it against the 1918 flu, which appeared to disproportionately strike the younger population.
There were attempts at finding medicines to cure the disease, and there was a minor scandal when the name of the teacher of materia medica (the study of drugs to treat diseases) at St George’s was found printed on an advertisement for an influenza cure: despite denying his involvement, he had to resign. The advertisement does not actually tell us what the medication consisted of, but we can only assume it did not work.
‘Woodland affaire’, 1890. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
Influenza also continued to be a concern even after the 1918-1919 pandemic had abated, and in the 1926 St George’s decided to get involved in researching vaccines for influenza. There was a public funding campaign for the project, and in February 1927, St George’s published a letter in The Times:
‘following on the traditions established here by Jenner and Hunter in their historical work, we are […] engaged in special research with the object of ascertaining what causes influenza, how it can be controlled, how it can be prevented from spreading and, finally, whether a really effective treatment can be found for it’.
‘Influenza epidemic: Research at St George’s Hospital’. The Times, 15 Feb 1927.
The arguments found in the plea for funding sound familiar: the ‘heavy burden which this scourge places on the community by the dislocation of business and loss of working power’. Because the project was widely publicised, the public was eager to take part, and we have some wonderful letters from people writing in and suggesting their own cures and theories of the causes of influenza: we will be tweeting these, so look out for them on our Twitter feed!
Records relating to influenza research. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
The money for the research was found, and the subject of the vaccinations was chosen to be the staff of Harrods and Selfridges on Oxford Street, as well as the staff at Quin & Axtens and Bon Marché in Brixton, department stores which had recently been acquired by Selfridges. Altogether 345 people were vaccinated.
Table 1, ‘Report on anti-catarrh inoculations (catarrh of respiratory mucous membranes)’, 1928. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
The various reports, meetings minutes and correspondence held in the archives tell us how the research subject was decided on, issues to do with the research, space and equipment (including the building of a spiral staircase in the laboratory – obviously an essential architectural refinement) and, most importantly, how the research was conducted and what the results were.
The report of the findings in 1928 shows the research was conducted using attenuated vaccine ‘obtained from pathological fluids or secretions or from a mucous surface of persons who exhibited clinical evidence of disease’, with the assumption that the disease was called by a bacterium called Pfeiffer’s bacillus, or Haemophilus influenzae (also known as h-flu). It was not until a few years later, in 1933, that it was definitely established that influenza was actually viral, and not bacterial.
And the results? Well, it appears that 1927 was a disappointing year when it comes to influenza, at least from the researchers’ point of view. The vaccination campaign was, however, declared a success, and there were plans to repeat it the following winter (although if that did happen, the records have not survived).
Response to ‘Report on the work carried out in the Research Laboratory’, 11 Jul 1928. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.
The preserved documents reveal an on-going preoccupation with and interest in influenza, even though (given what we are currently going through) there does not appear to be much sense of urgency, certainly not at the time of the 1918 influenza.
Although the research was not successful in finding a vaccine that worked, it was an important step on the way: you won’t know what works until you try it. Our knowledge is cumulative, and dead-ends are part of research – not everything can work out, but it all adds up. The first influenza vaccine was developed in the 1940s, and (soon, hopefully) we will see a COVID-19 vaccine.
Looking forward
What does this all have to do with digital preservation, then? Compared to the 1918 and 1889 flu pandemics the records we are creating today are largely digital. The technology supporting these records change rapidly and may one day become obsolete. If this happens, we could lose access to valuable records, including our covid-19 records. St George’s has recognised this and is actively engaged in looking after our digital information for the long term. We’ve recently purchased a digital preservation system, Preservica, to help us to preserve our digital records. We are working to develop methods and processes that will allow us to preserve the records that are currently being created, and to do so in a meaningful way that will work for colleagues across the organisation.
Rather than thinking of digital and physical something entirely separate, we should consider them as part of a continuum, as it were. Preserving digital material can be challenging, and we can’t always replicate the processes used for paper with digital material, but the gaps in the past records show the need to preserve evidence of the current pandemic, not only for historical interest but to provide evidence of what happened and how we dealt with it.
If you are interested in learning more about digital preservation at St George’s, or would like to get involved, please contact archives@sgul.ac.uk.
Changes to the site have primarily been made in order to offer an updated and more responsive PubMed, that provides the same experience and tools for users across all types of devices, from laptops to tablets and phones. Find out more about the transition from old to new here.
Some of the key changes to how results are presented include:
A new and improved best match, which is now the default sorting
A new summary view for results, which includes snippets from the abstract of each article
A new user guide and FAQs are available on the PubMed home page, or can be accessed directly here, and any questions, comments or other feedback can be shared using the Feedback button at the bottom of the new site. For those wishing to keep up to date with enhancements and changes to PubMed as they happen, follow the New and Noteworthy page.
There is lots of online training available for Pubmed. Their tutorials and on-demand course for the new interface are particularly useful.
How to find articles in Pubmed
Best search practices in the new PubMed remain the same as the legacy system:
To find articles by topic, enter your keywords or phrases into the search box and let PubMed’s term mapping do the work for you. Remember to be specific, don’t use quotation marks, search tags, or boolean operators, and avoid truncation (*)
To find articles by citation, enter the citation elements you have (author, title words, journal, volume, year, etc.) and let the citation sensor find the article for you
To find articles by author, search the author’s last name and initial(s)
To find articles by journal, use the complete journal title, ISSN or title abbreviation
During these uncertain times, we continue to provide support to all at St George’s. Whether you are NHS staff, a student or a researcher, don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will be able to advise. Email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk.
In less unusual times, we know that many of our students would be heading away from SGUL right now to enjoy a few weeks’ holiday; and while it’s easy lately for the days and weeks to blend into one, we hope that everyone does get a chance to take some time off over the coming weeks (even if our entertainment options these days are a little different than in the past).
That said, we know that many of you will also be working to stay on top of your studies. With that in mind, here are three quick reminders of some of the ways your library can help.
1. Access online resources with your SGUL password
Hunter allows you to search a huge collection of online journal articles that you can access with your SGUL login. For tips on finding articles in Hunter, check the Hunter FAQs.
Or browse a list of learning resources – including HSTalks for lecture videos, Cite them Right for referencing help, our most popular online resource BMJ Best Practice, and many more – that can also be accessed with your SGUL login.
Help with offsite access
Our quick video shows you the easiest way to log in to journals and other online resources when you’re offsite. There’s also a PDF helpsheet to guide you through the process.
If you’re having problems logging in to any of our journals or online resources, let us know at journals@sgul.ac.uk. We’ll get back to you as soon as possible between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Resetting your SGUL password
You can reset your SGUL password here, as long as you’ve registered an alternate email address; if you haven’t done this yet, contact the Student Life Centre to set one up.
If you have problems resetting you password, email ITAV@sgul.ac.uk.
2. Explore e-books
There are now over 3000 e-books available in Hunter – so whatever your topic, it’s quite likely there’s an e-book that can help. To find out, search in Hunter for Books and more; then select Online Resources in the filter at the left to see which titles you can access straight away using your SGUL login.
See our short video on finding and accessing e-books in Hunter.
Use the Online Resources filter to see e-books only
Temporary access to extra e-books
A number of publishers are making their e-book collections freely available during the Covid-19 health crisis – so you may be able to view e-books now that you wouldn’t usually be able to access.
From Monday 13th April you’ll be able to access all of these through Hunter while free access lasts. For now, you can log in to publishers’ websites to see what’s available and start reading. Try:
For a full list of these offers – as well as a growing collection of free resources on Covid-19 – check the new list in our Databases A-Z. We’re updating this list as new resources become available.
Borrowed books?
We’ve suspended holds for now, so you won’t be asked to return any books you’ve borrowed until further notice. Books will continue to renew automatically.
3. Get 1-2-1 help from a librarian
Working from home
The library team may now be working from kitchens, bedrooms, sitting-rooms and a few other places besides – but we’re as committed as always to getting you the information, research and referencing help you need.
We continue to provide 1:1 support for everyone at St George’s. To make an appointment, please email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk. In these unusual circumstances, we use Microsoft Teams to guide you through the databases and answer any questions you might have.
We are focusing our efforts on developing online material on Canvas and helping you make the most of our e-resources. For any queries or help needed email us at liaison@sgul.ac.uk. We are happy to help!
![Scan of Post mortem case of Ada Bell, [Wife of] Soldier, 32, PM/1918/240. Archives and Special Collections, St George’s, University of London.](https://stglibrary.files.wordpress.com/2020/11/image3.jpg)
St George's Library blog 