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Digital Design: Academic Resources

Books and E-books

The library aims to have copies of all core course reading materials. Your instructor may have already added them to your reading list for easy access. You can also find your books and e-books via the online library catalogue.  Books and DVDs are automatically renewed--see the page on borrowing items from the library for more information. 

E-books can be read online or downloaded. You can find more information on the E-book Guide pages. If you wish to download an E-book, you will need to download a free copy of Adobe Digital Editions. 

Journals and Journal Articles

The Library subscribes to over 18,000 journals. Journal articles are an excellent source for discovering new research and providing primary and secondary sources for your work.

You can search for academic journals in the online journal catalogue or for journal articles in the Discovery Service.

If you would like to search through multiple journals at once, you can use the library's databases. There are two methods for doing this:

1) Search through the Discovery Service which looks through many databases at once.

2) Choose your databases, based on your topic.

More instructions on journal searching, including key-words and using boolean operators can be found on the Searching the Databases training and support page. 

Theses, Dissertations and Grey Literature

What is grey literature?

Grey literature refers to research that is either unpublished or has been published in non-commercial form.  It can include:

  • Government documents
  • Policy statements
  • Working papers
  • Theses
  • Conference proceedings
  • Statistics
  • White papers
  • Industry and business reports

Grey literature can be a good source of raw data (statistics).  It is likely to be more sector or industry focused rather than academic, and can be used effectively in conjunction with academic sources.  It is often international, open access, and freely available.

Theses and Dissertations

  • If you want to find an exemplar dissertation or thesis for your LSBU course contact your School Admin office.

  • Many universities around the world make their theses and dissertations available online.  If you Google the name of the institution and repository or theses you might get lucky!