Ebooks

Browse the Education Ebooks Collection on a regular basis, checking both the Recently Purchased section as well as your subject specific areas.  You can find out more about our Education Ebooks Collection in our Top Picks Blog post.

Print books and Ebooks

Set up email alerts for new titles in your research area.

• Alerts can be set up by logging onto your account on the iDiscover Library Catalogue (click on the 'Save query' option at the top of the results list to save your search, then in the yellow toolbar at the top click 'Turn on notifications')
   
• Many publishers offer an email alert service, for which you may need to register for a free account (for example Cambridge University Press where the option to subscribe to alerts is in your profile once logged on). Look out for links to alerts or email notifications.  Details for recent publications can often be found in the information for researchers section.

Blogs and social media platforms can be a useful, informal way to keep-up-to-date within your research area. Scholars in your field may blog or have a Twitter profile you can follow or you can search for accounts covering your research area.

Be aware that social media platforms may contain opinions rather than a pure record of research and they may disappear or change over time.

And of course, remember that you need to evaluate information you find on social media.  The following checklist may help:

• Network - do they follow or have followers from accounts that are connected to their area of research?
• Context - do they usually post or tweet on particular topics? If so, what have they said in the past and does this give any more detail or context to their post?
• Content - can the information be corroborated from other sources? Is this an expressed opinion or a research based post? Check any links and evaluate these as you would any other source of information
• Date account was created - recently created accounts may be harder to evaluate as they might not have a large network established or archive of previous posts to look at.
• Location of the source - are they in or connected to the place they are writing about?
• Bias – is this a personal account or connected to an organisation and if so is there are possibility of bias.
• Date of post – when was this post written, be especially careful of that have been shared or retweeted as these could be referring to old information and events.

Browse news items in your research area through services such as Factiva and Lexis Library News.

Times Educational Supplement

Times Higher Education

Factiva - Run searches by keyword. Click on the 'Source' option on the left hand side, then 'Major news and Business Sources' then select the regions you are interested in.

Lexis Library News - Select 'Content' and then 'News' from the toolbar at the top then search by keyword. 

Search for a conference

Conal Conference Alerts: Browse or subscribe to an email alert to keep up to date with events that are happening worldwide, within your research area.

Search for conference papers

• Databases such as Scopus and ERIC cover conference papers (remember to limit your search by resource type).
• Papers may be available on the individual conference website.
• Published papers held by Cambridge University will appear in the iDiscover. 

Google Scholar

Google Scholar does not publish a list of covered content, however, for general awareness, you can set up alerts to receive emails with new results matching a specified search.  Further guidance on this can be found on the Google Scholar help pages.  Please bear in mind the information provided on Google Scholar on the Searching for Journal Articles tab.

Mendeley Reference Manager

Mendeley users can receive recommendations generated by content already added to a user's library. Once logged onto the Mendeley Reference Manager, go to settings, then notifications, then there is the option to receive weekly emails.