Subject Resources for Geography and Geology

Key journals and databases

• Nature is a prestigious international scientific journal that publishes the finest peer-reviewed research in all aspects of science and technology.
• ScienceDirect is a collection covering life, physical, medical, technical and social sciences.

Additional journals and databases

• GreenFILE has information covering all aspects of the human impact on the environment. It includes content on global warming, green building, pollution, sustainable agriculture, renewable energy, recycling, and more.
• Quarterly Journal of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology publishes articles on geology as applied to civil engineering mining practice and water resources, covering all topics within the fields of engineering geology and hydrogeology.
• Wiley Online Library is a multidisciplinary collection of over 1600 journals, covering the life, health and physical sciences.

These resources are great for use across all disciplines and programmes of study.

• Academic Search Premier is a multi-disciplinary database with more than 4,600 magazines and journals, including full-text access to nearly 3,900 scholarly and peer-reviewed journals.
• Box of Broadcasts is an on-demand TV and radio service for educational research brought to you from Learning on Screen. The academically focused service enables you to watch and record programmes from over 75 free-to-air channels in the UK and search an extensive archive of over 2.2 million broadcasts. The service includes ten foreign language channels and allows you to create clips and playlists to share or embed into presentations.
• Browzine gives you access to top journals from your area of study in the Browzine Scholarly Journal Room. Browzine is a browsable newsstand of the University Library’s top journals, which lets you easily discover, read and monitor the key journals in your field. Learn more about Browzine in this short video.
• LinkedIn Learninggives you full, free, unlimited access to thousands of high quality online courses and video tutorials written by industry experts. The courses cover many topics including using a wide range of software, and personal development skills in education, public speaking, employability and much more. You can even claim and display certificates for courses you complete on your LinkedIn profile, to give your online CV a boost!
• SAGE Research Methods is a database which supports research at all levels by providing material to guide users through each step of the research process. From writing your research question and choosing a method, to analysing data, writing up and publishing the findings. Resources include a methods map, books, reference works, journal articles, podcasts and instructional videos from world-leading academics. With information on qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods, Sage Research Methods is the ideal tool to support you through your research.
• Scopus is the world’s largest abstract and citation database, containing 24,600 journals from 5,000 publishers. It is excellent for literature reviews or for finding out what has been published in your area as it can locate high quality journal articles, book chapters and more, for any subject. 
• Springer Link provides researchers with access to millions of scientific documents from journals, books, series, protocols and reference works.
• Statista is a comprehensive statistics platform offering over 1.5 million data sets. Find studies and reports, forecasts and surveys from over 400 industries that you can download in a range of formats. There are also video tutorials and a quick user guide to help you make the most of Statista.

Newspapers

Newspapers can be a useful way of keeping up to date with current affairs or recent events and newspaper archives usually contain issues with less recent information, which is useful for finding articles of a more historical interest.

• British Library Newspapers (1800-1900) contains a large range of national, regional and local newspapers from the period. These include the Illustrated Police News, the Chartist Northern Star and the Morning Chronicle.
• Daily Mail Historical Archive (1896-2004) contains news stories and images that capture twentieth century culture and society. Offering full page and article images, with searchable full-text back to the first issue, this is a useful resource for historical research.
• The Financial Times contains news and analysis about the world of business and finance. The electronic collection goes back to 1999, the latest articles cannot be accessed for 30 days but are listed in search results.
• Gale OneFile: News contains articles from over 2,300 newspapers from around the world. These include major British newspapers, as well as United States and Australian titles. It also has thousands of images, radio and TV broadcasts and transcripts.
• The Guardian and The Observer Historical Newspapers (1791-2003) provides genealogists, researchers and scholars with online, easily searchable first-hand accounts and unparalleled coverage of the politics, society and events of the time.
• Lexis+ contains over 650 regional and national UK newspapers from 1982 to the present. It is possible to limit your search to either national or regional titles, or you can search the whole of the newspaper database.
• Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Burney Newspapers Collection is Reverend Charles Burney’s collection of early English news media. A comprehensive primary source for this period, which helps track the development of news.
• Times Digital Archive contains every issue of The Times from 1785 to 2019. You can search by keyword or for a particular issue and each story appears as it looks in the original print copy of the newspaper.
• Times Educational Supplement is the UK’s foremost weekly publication covering primary, secondary and further education and can be access by creating a personal account with your Edge Hill University email address.

The following software or research tools have been identified as useful for your programme of study.

• Digimap provides Ordnance Survey digital map data and high quality cartographic products direct to the desktop. In addition to the Ordnance Survey data, you can also access:
  • Aerial Digimap which offers detailed aerial imagery from Getmapping.
  • Environment Digimap contains land cover data from the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology.
  • Historic Digimap which allows historic maps to be viewed and printed.
  • Geology Digimap which contains geological maps.
  • Lidar Digimap which offers Lidar data from UK government agencies.
  • Digimap Resource Centre contains resources that will help you use Digimap.
  • Digimap YouTube Channel contains many videos to help you use Digimap

Catalyst has several workstations that contain specialist software for Geography students and that can be booked for between 1 and 3 hours, including:

• ArcGIS Pro is available on all PCs on the second floor of Catalyst and in the Geosciences building. You can get further information by contacting Sue Jones in the Geography department.
• ESA SNAP
• Google Earth Pro
• Leica Geosystems XPro
• Trimble Coordinate System Manager
• UASMaster

Other software is also available:

• ArcMap is a modelling, analysis and mapping tool and is available on all PCs on the 2nd floor of Catalyst. It is also available in the Geosciences building. You can get further information by contacting Sue Jones in the Geography department.
• Project R can be downloaded on to any University computer by searching for the Software Center on the bottom ‘type here to search’ toolbar. Search for R, then select R with R Studio, and you will be able to download R onto the chosen networked computer. More information is available from r-project.org/. There are also print and electronic books on R available through searching Discover More.