Education: Finding Books

In addition to printed dictionaries, the Library provides the database Oxford Reference Online  which contains a range of dictionaries and reference works in the areas shown above including the following:

• Dictionary of Education
• Dictionary of Law
• Dictionary of Sociology
• Oxford Companion to Music
• A Dictionary of Contemporary World History
• Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable
• Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
• English Pronouncing Dictionary

plus various Language dictionaries and Encyclopaedias

 Atlases: contain useful historical information for particular periods and regions. Some examples in the Library are:

• Atlas of Ireland
• Hiberniae Delineatio (Atlas of Ireland 1685)
• Atlas of Eastern Europe in the twentieth century

Bibliographies come in many shapes and sizes, as well as those found at the end of books they can be published as works on their own. They can be lists of publications by one author, or on one subject, or of one country.. They are useful because they can, for example, enable you to trace books and articles published on a particular subject or by a particular author. An annotated bibliography will give some explanatory notes about the books covered. Once you have found a bibliographical reference to a work, there is an excellent possibility you will be able to gain access to the publication itself.

Published bibliographies are the work of experienced scholars and researchers who have judged the material for inclusion, they also may contain important information which is not located by searching in databases  eg book chapters, government documents, or primary sources.   A bibliography may give you a good starting point to quickly assess what literature is available on a particular subject and save hours of online searching.

A bibliography of the works of an individual, or works about an individual, as well as other subjects can usually be found by doing an Keyword search on the Library Catalogue.

Some examples of bibliographies are listed below.

The Bibliography section in Coleraine is located in Reading Room 2 in the Z section, in Magee it is on the top floor of the LIbrary with the prefix REF Z.

 Guides to Archives; where they are held and what they contain

• Directory of Irish archives
• Irish records : sources for family and local history
• A guide to local history sources in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
• Irish history from 1700 : a guide to sources in the Public Record Office
• The researcher's guide: film, television, radio and related documentation, collections in the UK
• Archive Skills and Tools for Historians, article by Sean Cunningham.