You will be accessing a wide variety of items throughout your programme, to learn more about the subject. Commonly used types of item are summarised below. Some are more suitable for inclusion in your assignments than others.
Check the Evaluating Sources guide for tools to help with this decision.
Cartoon, photographic and video productions can be excellent illustrations of ideas and concepts, and preferable in many contexts to textual descriptions.
You can usually use such works in your assignments if they give added value, rather than mere decoration.
We recommend though that you always check the licensing conditions. See our Copyright guide for details.
Academic textbooks, usually written by subject experts, are great sources for subject overviews, theoretical underpinnings and timelines of topic development.
Books take time to be published and vary in their coverage - some are short and very specific in nature; others are encyclopedic in their coverage of a topic.
Many textbooks are updated - known as a new edition - to reflect new developments in the understanding of the subject.
Sometimes, subsequent editions also reflect different learning styles. For example, the original study skills handbook (Cottrell, 1995) was heavily text-based while the 5th edition (Cottrell, 2019) adopts a more visual approach.
Note: using the most up-to-date edition is vitally important in some subject disciplines, e.g. adult nursing, but less significant in others.
Cottrell, S. (2019) The study skills handbook. 5th edn. London: Red Globe Press.
Pears, R. and Shields, G. (2019) Cite them right: the essential referencing guide. 11th edn. London: Red Globe Press.
Presentations made at a conference are known as conference papers.
Conference papers can be indexed in multiple resources, including bibliographic databases.
Papers presented by lecturers or researchers allied to a university can usually also be found on the institutional repository.
All the papers from a conference are sometimes collated together into the conference proceedings.
These can be found in print, indexed by multiple resources or on the relevant organisation's website.
Encyclopedias, including Wikipedia, are good sources to learn about definitions and generic information on a topic.
Traditional services are compiled by subject experts and considered authoritative.
Wikipedia is deliberately designed as an open access resource with editing privileges potentially available to everyone. However, entries on medical topics are checked more rigorously before publication.
Journals are published on a regular basis - weekly, monthly, quarterly - and are comprised of a selection of articles relevant to the journal's specialty. Journals can be:
Like journals, the articles appearing in them vary in purpose, style and length. They usually provide details on:
Some articles, especially those in scholarly journals, are scrutinised by subject experts - peer reviewed - before they are accepted for publication. This ensures a broader, more rigourous presentation.
Like journal articles, newspaper articles and other news sources vary in length and purpose. Short updates or sensationalist stories are often not detailed enough to be considered appropriate for inclusion in academic assignments.
Longer essay-style articles can be good introductory sources for exploring potential discussion points.
News sources are particularly useful for illustrating economic circumstances and social attitudes. This confirmation of circumstances at particular points in time enables analysis of social trends.
A patent is used to protect an invention and it's creative process for a set period of time.
The patent and descriptive details within it serve as a legal contract and intellectual property right and ensure that no one else can use the invention without the patent owner's consent.
Patents are an important source of information in some subject areas as they show the latest developments before these are promoted or discussed in other information formats.
'Reference Works' is a collective term for religious works, almanacs, yearbooks and other works of general interest. These were traditionally consulted as initial sources of generic facts.
In today's online world, many of these works have been superceded by online search engines.
The findings from research studies are disseminated in many ways, using different types of media, e.g.:
The description used for each study depends on the methodology applied. Common types of research are:
Reports can take several forms - informal, formal, official and technical.
Informal reports are often prepared by individual authors and submitted to the requesting organisation for discussion or further analysis.
Formal reports declare an organisation's policies or position on specific matters.
Official reports are similar to formal reports but are presented by a government department or the review committee of a formal public inquiry, e.g.
Report of the Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust Public Inquiry (2013) Available at: https://www.gov.uk/
government/publications/report-of-the-mid-staffordshire-nhs-foundation-trust-public-inquiry (Accessed: 8 February 2021).
Note: inquiry reports are often discussed informally in other ways, e.g. the above is widely known as the Francis report. When referencing such sources in assignments though, use the full reference.
Blogs, tweets and other social media posts can be great learning tools, especially when the posts are by professional organisations, academics and other subject experts.
These posts can also act as an introduction to other, more in-depth, sources on the topic.
Standards are voluntary documents not regulations, but compliance with a given standard in part or whole may become a regulation, law or example of best practice.
Standards are particularly relevant to students in subject areas that comply with British Standards, e.g. aerospace, engineering, manufacturing and materials.
UWS Library subscribes to British Standards Online (BSOL) - a database of all current British, European and International Standards.
Statistical information is often useful to illustrate certain situations, e.g. impact of social and economic circumstances and diseases on society.
You will sometimes see statistical information in journal articles and other sources but generally, this is not always easy to find.
In the UK, dissertations are research projects prepared by Honours or Masters level students, usually as the final assignment of their degree programme.
Selected dissertations in some subject areas are passed to the Library for other students to use as exemplars for layout and formatting.
Theses are longer, more in-depth projects prepared by PhD students.
These are often examples of first-hand - or primary - research and can be held in a university's archive.
Note, some countries use a different match of level and description for such works.
Websites have many different purposes so although often informative, the information found there may not match the learning outcomes for an assignment.
For example, policy documents and other guidance from government departments and related agencies will serve to underpin many academic discussions.
However, the evidence behind these documents required for academic or professional analysis may only be available by searching (subscription only) bibliographic databases.