Library Skills Online: PhD Students (Library Introduction)

UWS Library has an extensive collection of relevant resources that support learning, teaching and research. Each of our five campuses has its own library, and students can access resources held throughout the UWS Library network and online.

Our Welcome to the Library guide includes information on the range of library services available, opening hours, borrowing and reserving books, and study facilities available in our campus libraries, as well as tips on using them effectively.  

The Library has written a detailed research support guide to help you on your PhD journey, including information on conducting a literature review, setting up a research profile and open access publishing.

Your Academic Librarian can advise you on appropriate research databases to help with your literature review and answer general questions about the library and its services.

Try searching the Library's research databases.  Some index articles by type, e.g. research studies, while others focus on publications in a specific subject area. 

The articles indexed in the databases are primarily academic and professional level in some subject areas, e.g. education and nursing. Trade/ industry publications dominate though in others, e.g. Computing, Business.

A complete list of the databases that we subscribe to is available in our A-Z List of databases, however for a more subject oriented list of databases and to find out where to start, you can visit our Subject Guides. An appointment with your Academic Librarian to discuss the range of databases suitable for your subject is also useful.

• For UK theses, search the British Library's Ethos service.
• For a thesis published overseas, see the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations website.

The focus of PhD activity is often on journal articles and research texts. Government documents, practice guidelines, annual reports, statistics and other so-called 'grey literature' sources can also enhance projects and provide background or complementary contextual details..  A selection of sources are:

See the Research Support guide for a wider selection of potential sources.

'How to get started with literature searching' delivered by Joshua Cheyne, the Academic Librarian of the School of Business and Creative Industries at UWS on the 3rd of May 2023.

You will be accessing a wide range of sources, especially at the beginning of your project and throughout your literature review. It is recommended that you put procedures in place to help you keep track of all of these sources. We sugest using an online reference management tool like EndNote which is free to students and staff at UWS and for which there is an extensive user guide.

An Inter Library Loan (ILL) is a journal article, print book, conference paper or book chapter held in another library's collection, that is requested on your behalf through the Inter Library Loan service. This is a particularly helpful service for PhD researchers as it is inevitable that you will come across interesting items that aren't held by UWS Library.

Be aware of your responsibilities as a researcher for ethical considerations; legal use of data, sources and intellectual property.

• Check, and comply with your School's Ethics policy.
• See the Copyright at UWS guide to ensure compliance when re-using others' work.