How to use Primo to renew your book loans, request a book that's currently on loan to someone else, and to understand how Primo works. Any questions, please contact Kate.
The easiest way to find a book is to search on Primo. Type in the author's name, title of the book or search by keywords. Limiting your search to books, journal titles etc from the drop down menu will help narrow down your results.
Make a note of the class number so you can find the book on the shelf.
You may also wish to browse the shelves but remember that not all books will be in the same location as some will be relevant to other subjects too.
The Education books are mostly to be found on Level 2 of the Library. The Dewey decimal classification numbers for education subjects are:
Check out our tutorial on the Library classification System
As well as physical books the Library also has a number of ebooks. Whilst ebooks are designed to be read online you can save/download sections (within copyright guidelines) and occasionally you will be able to download books for a either a 1-day 'check out' or sometimes permanent download to keep.
Search Primo (title/author recommended) and limit to 'full text online'. Or, see the direct links to ebook collections below:
To find the most up to date research you will need to search for research papers, often published within academic journals. Sometimes your lecturer may suggest a particular journal. Often journals may have a particular focus e.g. British journal of Special Education so articles will have a focus on learning difficulties and inclusion so can be very useful when you are looking at a particular topic.
How to find journals:
What are journals?
Check out this short video for more information on what a journal is Check out this short tutorial on using journals
These journals can be accessed individually via a search in Primo with a Username and Password
Databases include books, journal and magazine articles and conference proceedings. As well as general databases there are also subject specific databases helping to ensure your search is more relevant. You may also consider looking at particular collections of journals. These databases are indexes -where we subscribe to the full text a link will be available but please note these tools search outside of our full text collections and not every hit will be full text.
To search for relevant articles simply type in your keywords (see choosing your keywords in education for help choosing these).
The databases below can be searched for journal articles.
If you are training to teach, you can use the School Experience Collection: books and teaching materials for use with primary and secondary pupils. The collection has been assembled for over 40 years and includes some items of historical interest. Some of the collection is used to support modules on children’s literature, including a collection of picture books.
If you are going on placement, you will need to be able to find materials to take with you to support your teaching and also the school which may not have a library. The aims of this guide are:
More information on the School Experience Collection & how to use it
The library holds a very small amount of DVDs which are kept on the shelves alongside the books however most recordings of TV programmes can now be accessed online via BoB:
There is a wealth of information available on the web and some of this may be useful for your assignments. You can search for websites using a search engine such as Google or Bing however often this can overwhelm you with results. To improve your results think about the using the advanced search settings - you can specify words to include/ exclude and limit by type of website.