Sociology
Ben Yagoda says that teaching students to write well may be too ambitious a goal. Instead he aims to improve your writing by eliminating those common errors such as spelling mistakes, poorly chosen words, and train-wreck punctuation. In his book How to Not Write Bad you’ll find lots of helpful advice.
Motivational books are not usually found in university libraries, but one that seems appropriate is How to Write a Lot: A Practical Guide to Academic Writing. Psychologist Paul Silvia discusses specious barriers to writing (can't find the time... need to do more research first... need a better computer... or just waiting for inspiration), and offers motivational tools and practical suggestions for overcoming them.
Do you need to access films and other audiovisual material from the Library collections? Come to the Audiovisual Library and join a 10 minutes tour!
Sociology Department Seminar Series - "Māori and Pacific Student Success in Higher Education: Preliminary Results from a Qualitative Study"
Lost? It does not have to be this way. We are offering tours through the General Library during the first two weeks of Semester 1.
Anyone who studies Sociology knows C. Wright Mills' classic, The Sociological Imagination. Now Jock Young has coined "The Criminological Imagination" for his provocative new book.
We have one copy of this book in the General Library. The call number is 301.0944 D96Y.
The UNESCO Memory of the World National Committee of New Zealand announced two new inscriptions to the New Zealand documentary heritage register.
The merger of Penguin Books and German-owned Random House has received much media attention in October. In a recent Guardian article, Oliver Wainwright muses about the beauty of Penguin Books.
The Library provides access to a new database, the British Academy Publications Online (BAPO). BAPO is a collection of academic monographs and edited volumes from the distinguished British Academy list, made available by Oxford University Press.
Come and hear from Associate Professor Alex Holcombe, from the School of Psychology at the University of Sydney, about Open Access and the academic community. His seminar is entitled “Our Scholarship System is Broken. Can Open Access Fix It?”
We will be offering again a Targeted Learning Session to Sociology 100 students in the General Library. Drop in anytime between 11am - 2pm, on Thursday, September 27.
Would you like some support with your first essay assignments?
Papers Past contains more than two million pages of digitised New Zealand newspapers and periodicals. Latest additions to Papers Past include the New Zealand Herald (1863-1884).
Hika Lite is a te reo Māori learning application for mobile phones, released in partnership with Vodafone NZ for Māori Language Week. It is available as free download for both iPhone and Android mobile.
Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review is now available in Project Muse. It offers its readers up-to-date research findings, emerging trends, and cutting-edge perspectives concerning East Asian history and culture from scholars in both English-speaking and Asian language-speaking academic communities.
The Library has trial access to new modules for Oxford Bibliographies Online: Anthropology, Linguistics, Political Science, and Sociology. The trial runs until 17 June 2012.
The fiftieth anniversary of Samoan independence is celebrated on 1 June 2012. To mark this occasion the Library is displaying some of our extensive collection of Samoan publications.
Today marks the 138th anniversary of Howard Carter's (9 May 1874 - 2 March 1939) birthday. The name of the English artist, archaeologist and egyptologist is primarily associated with the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen...
The Documentary Edge Festival presents 72 films from New Zealand and around the world from 26 April until 13 May 2012. The special section Arab Spring is in the spotlight of this year's festival.
In less than two weeks New Zealand's largest literary festival will turn Auckland again into a vibrant meeting point for acclaimed writers, readers and thinkers.
The Library database ProQuest Historical Newspapers has recently added the archives of two major Irish newspapers:
- The Irish Times, 1859-2007
- The Weekly Irish Times, 1876-1958
Reading ejournals instead of print journals certainly saves a lot of trees, but what about other environmental effects?
From 16th March 2012 the monthly student Internet data allowance will double to 400MBs for undergraduates and to 800MBs for postgrad students.
The Chicago Manual of Style Online is a tremendously useful guide to citations and writing style. An interesting, amusing, and occasionally helpful feature is the monthly Q&A section.
The German Studies Review (GSR) joined Project Muse and is now accessible through this Library database.
The Arts Information Services team is offering 10 sessions of the undergraduate research skills workshop to Arts students. Book on the Library website under Library workshops, or ask a librarian at the Enquiry Desk in the Genral Library for assistance.
The Library has licensed a new Gale database. 19th Century UK Periodicals provides access to invaluable collections of digitised newspapers, magazines and journals, covering the period 1800 to 1900. Major content contributors are the British Library, the National Library of Scotland and other specialist libraries.
In July 2011 Google Scholar introduced with Google Scholar Citations a simple way for authors to compute their citation metrics and track them over time. This service has now been made available to everyone.
The Library now provides access to The Vogue Archive, containing the entire run of the U.S. edition of Vogue magazine, from the first issue in 1892 to the current month.
The following tips may be useful to all researchers interested in Open Access publishing.
OAIster is a union catalogue of millions of digital resources. The freely available and easy to search database can be accessed from this WorldCat web page.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) is the port of call for all researchers, authors, publishers, librarians, and readers interested in free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
Open Access stands for toll-free online access to scientific and scholarly literature with the aim of ensuring maximum dissemination and rapid availability of research.
Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fifth year, is taking place from 24 to 30 October 2011. The Library is hosting three events for University of Auckland staff and postgraduates.
Open Access Week, a global event now entering its fifth year, is taking place from 24 to 30 October 2011. The Library is hosting three events for University of Auckland staff and postgraduates.
The library has licensed Update II of Mass Observation Online and herewith provides access to all digital content released to date.
Users of Index New Zealand are asked to provide feedback on additional search limit options.
Participate in the survey - and go in the draw to win a $50 voucher by submitting your feedback!
Digital Scholarship, a provider of information and commentary on various digital information issues, has released version 7 of the Google Books Bibliography. Links to works that are freely available on the Internet are provided where possible.
Alexander Street Press produces academic collections of video and primary source materials in the arts, humanities and social sciences.
Please register for a free trial.
Informit is a large collection of databases covering many different subjects and disciplines. The focus is on Australian publications, but there is a large amount of material relating to New Zealand and Pacific studies.
We have this available on trial until 15 August.
DigiZeitschriften is an archive of journals published in Germany, including some English language material.
The library has trial access to new modules for OBO: International Relations, Medieval Studies, and Victorian Literature.
The trial will run until 15 June, 2011.
The Library currently has trial access to Bridgeman Education, a searchable database of over 300,000 images from the Bridgeman Art Library.
All of Tariq Ali's recent Robb lectures, on 'Empire and its futures', have been uploaded to the University website.
Arts Information Services has a NEW Facebook Page!
The current issues of 174 journals will be available on the JSTOR platform from January 2011.
Other new features include new content formats, multimedia files, journal-related news and information and new personalization features.
Five award-winning war photographers examine up-close the suffering and dignity of people affected by war in Our World At War. Accompanied by a second exhibition, Wars of Dignity in the Pacific, in which 22 images of warfare in the Pacific show how over centuries, behaviour and rituals developed to protect women, children and prisoners.
Opens on 11 November.
Rock’s Backpages is the ultimate archive of rock journalism. The online library contains the full text of over 13,000 reviews, interviews and features on artists from Aaliyah to ZZ Top, by the world’s best rock writers, from the most influential music publications.
The time is now to celebrate the potential of our young Pacific people. If you have a creative streak, leadership attributes and are an inspiration to your community, apply for these awards.
Pacific Progress 2010 is a series of reports which examine the place of New Zealand’s Pacific peoples in a number of sectors. The first two reports in the 2010 series were released on 16 June, and include:
- Education and Pacific peoples in New Zealand
- Demographics of New Zealand's Pacific population
The Journal of War and Cultural Studies has a broad but clearly-defined research field: the relationship between war and culture in the twentieth century, and into the twenty-first, primarily in Europe but not excluding other areas involved in conflict, although these will retain a focus on their relationship to Europe.
14 specially commissioned essays that respond to a diverse selection of items from the John Johnson Collection are available online.
Sociology Compass is a journal that publishes peer-reviewed survey articles, rather than original research articles. It will be useful for students beginning their research and looking for an overview of the academic literature of a topic.
You can keep up with events that interest you by reading your favourite newspaper online in Press Display.
Press Display contains newspapers and magazines from eighty-two countries.
The library is currently trialling the newly launched Oxford Bibliographies Online, an online bibliographic tool from Oxford University Press, designed to help students and scholars in the humanities and social sciences find reliable information sources quickly.
Sometimes it is difficult to know where to begin when starting out on research. A reference book could provide the information you need to inform your idea and develop your research topic.
Which reference book holds the information you need? The database Reference Universe identifies relevant reference books for you.
Library users will continue to have access to the Paley Center Seminars which the Library trialled earlier this year.
Library users will now have further access to British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP).
Library users will now have access to a number of reference volumes through Blackwell Reference Online.
The Library has a new edition of Conducting Research Literature Reviews by Arlene Fink.
Find relevant, detailed, online information in Sage handbooks and encyclopedias.
Statistics New Zealand have released a review which was undertaken following a significant increase in the level of ‘New Zealander’ responses to the ethnicity question at the 2006 Census.
A new encyclopedia on revolutions and protests is available online in Blackwell Reference Online.
The Library has updated access to the British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers. Users will now have access to papers from 1801 to the present day.
A joint venture between news website Scoop and AUT's Pacific Media Centre will see more Pacific news stories available online.
After seven years' work the first 100 years of the Journal of the Polynesian Society has now been been completely digitised.
For a short period the Library will have trial access to the Paley Media Seminars Online. This is an exclusive video archive that documents the insights of various media and entertainment insiders as they discuss their respective industries.
The University is trialing a commercial digital television service, e-cast, as an alternative to its own satellite television service UniSat. Both services allow students and staff access to a range of national and international television programmes.
Complete the Library's Customer Satisfaction Survey before the 28th of August and go in the draw to win a 120GB Apple iPod Classic.
The IBSS blog shows how to discover academic research on popular protest and political turmoil.
Two new features on Project MUSE will now make it easier for users to locate information within a particular journal and to determine its relevance to their research.
More New Zealand historical content has been ditigized by the National Library, and made available to the public on the Papers Past website.
Niustext is a new database featuring several South Pacific newspapers and other news sources.
We have Niustext available on a trial basis until 11 July.
Are you having difficulty finishing your dissertation? Are you feeling stuck after trying various approaches, or panicky about the entire enterprise? It is unlikely that your cognitive abilities are to blame. More likely, the culprits are anxiety, self-doubt, procrastination, perfectionism, and the thoughts, feelings, and behaviour that accompany these difficulties. This book was written for you.
Miller, A. Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All! Washington: APA, 2009
Do people from OECD countries have the same amount of time for leisure? Not according to the latest OECD report.
The Blackwell Companions series provide useful introductions to a topic. Many of these are available online in the e-book collection Blackwell Reference Online.
The British Library recently launched EThOS, the Electronic Theses Online Service.
EThOS is a free online database with 250,000 records for doctoral theses from UK higher education institutions. This brings together the electronic theses from many institutional repositories, together with records for other theses that are still only available in hard copy.
A major update more than doubles the size of the collection of Mass Observation material available online.
Additions include the complete diaries 1941-1942, and six topical collections covering film, reading habits, dreams, religion, victory celebrations, and capital punishment.
The Library is pleased to announce that Haiqing Lin has been appointed to the position of Asian Languages Librarian. Haiqing has been the Chinese Resources Librarian for the last three years and before that had extensive library experience in China with The Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies.
The John Johnson Collection of Printed Ephemera at the Bodleian Library has printed ephemera focussing on nineteenth century entertainment, the book trade, popular prints, advertising, broadsides and other popular material relating to crime, murder and executions. It is now available through the Library web site.
50 Years of United States policy is available online via the database Digital National Security Archive.
The Atlas of Socioeconomic Deprivation in New Zealand, NZDep2006 was published by the Ministry of Health last year.
University of the South Pacific theses are now online. The digital collection includes theses from USP, and also from 20 other universities which have produced theses about Pacific topics.
ticTOCs is a free online Table of Contents alerting service. It has been around for some months now, and is now at the stage of 'critical mass' where it has enough journals to make it a useful service.
The University of Auckland Library has launched LibrarySearch, the pilot version of a new search environment that simplifies and enhances access to the Library's resources, and which more closely matches current user expectations of web searching. University staff and students are invited to try out the new environment and give us feedback.
The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture, features cross-disciplinary, accessible and cutting-edge scholarship from academics and public intellectuals. In addition to research essays and book reviews, The Sixties includes conversations, interviews, graphics, and analyses of the ways the 1960s continue to be constructed in contemporary popular culture.
Social Theory is a database which brings together an extensive range of influential writings representing the most important trends of sociological thought from the eighteenth century to the present day.
Twentieth Century Advice Literature is a collection of handbooks, manuals, textbooks, etiquette guides, self-help books, instructional pamphlets, and how-to books that illustrate both how Americans actually behaved and how they felt they ought to behave.
Over 100,000 pages of diaries, correspondence, letterbooks, telegrams and other papers from Sir Donald McLean are now accessible online through the Alexander Turnbull Library’s new website Manuscripts & Pictorial
Economic growth of recent decades has benefitted the rich more than the poor.
So here it is. www.nzonscreen.com. Online access to full length doccumentaries (e.g. Patu!) and film. Sample episodes of titles such as Spot On, Hudson & Halls, Gloss, Billy T, E Tipu e Rea, etc. Some titles only display excerpts.
The United Nations has provided free online access to the Yearbook of the United Nations.
To keep up with current news set up alerts or RSS feeds from your favourite news web sites.
The second edition of the International Social Sciences Encyclopedia is available online in Gale Virtual Reference Library.
Rock's Backpages is a Library of rock music writing and journalism. It provides access to an exclusive archive of reviews, interviews and features on artists from Aaliyah to ZZ Top.
In the First Person is an online index to over 4,000 collections of personal narratives in English, offering keyword searching of more than 700,000 full-text pages from some 18,000 individuals from all walks of life. It also contains pointers to some 4,300 audio and video files and 30,000 bibliographic records.
E ngā mana, e ngā reo, e ngā karangatanga maha o ngā hau e whā, malo e lelei, fakalofa lahi atu, talofa lava, ni sa bula, kia orana, tēnā koutou. Ki a rātou kua rūpeke atu ki tua, kua ea, hoki ki a tātou o te ora, tēnā koutou katoa.
To those currently undertaking the task of research pertaining to Māori or Pasifika perceptions, then please do not hesitate to come and visit our services on Ground Floor, General Library | Te Herenga Mātauranga Whānui, Far corner by the computers.
Library tutorials for Development Studies students are being held in September, covering finding 'news'.
Blackwell Reference Online is a searchable collection of online reference books from Blackwell Publishers,, comprising around 300 works in the humanities and social sciences, business and management.
Each individual title will be added to Voyager, the Library Catalogue, in the future.
EndNote is a really useful program that helps you manage your bibliographies and citations.
There will be some training sessions for Sociology and Development Studies students.
Beginners class
Wednesday 16 July 1-3pm and then repeated on Thursday 31 July 10-12am.
Advanced session
Wednesday 5 August 2-4pm
Please book online.
The News Manual, a three-volume book published at the University of Papua New Guinea in 1991, has been relaunched as an online resource to help young people entering the profession and support mid-career journalists wanting to improve their skills.
Did you know that if you access Google Scholar through the Library website when off campus you get free access to full-text material to which the University Library subscribes?
And when on campus, students have access to the University's subscription resources found by Google Scholar at full speed and without traffic counting towards data caps. Try the Library website's Google Scholar page.
This is a searchable online encyclopedia published by Wiley-Blackwell in association with the International Communication Association. It comprises over 1,330 newley-commissioned A-Z entries, divided into 29 editorial areas representing major fields of inquiry, each of which is headed by a leading expert in the field.
Click here to access trial.
The editor of Choice lists her favourite excuses for late submissions of book reviews.
'The overworked/wild beast combo—always a winner: “I have become an accidental library director at a time when we are doubling the size of the library and I am up to my neck in alligators.”'
Bartlett, Rebecca Ann. "The Dog Ate It". Choice, 45, 11, July 2008.
The ARROW Discovery Service is an open-access repository of 162,063 Australian research outputs, including theses; preprints; postprints; journal articles; book chapters; music recordings and pictures.
The collected works of Jeremy Bentham are available online through the database Past Masters.
The range of journals indexed in IBSS has increased, with the addition of 15 new titles, such as Human Rights Review, International Journal of Transitional Justice, and Journal of Modern Chinese History.
We have a useful new book in the library for anyone writing a thesis.
Lunenburg, Frederick C., and Beverly J. Irby. 2008. Writing a Successful Thesis or Dissertation: Tips and Strategies for Students in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Corwin Press.
(General Library 808.066378 L96)
The Australasian Religion Index (ARI) is an author and subject index covering over eighty religious and theological serials published in Australia or New Zealand and representing all religious traditions. Related areas of study such as history and sociology are also covered.
Users of Project MUSE articles and Tables of Contents in the recently-launched new format may have noticed an additional feature - "clickable" subject headings for each article, allowing fast and easy connections to related content in Project MUSE.
The Cambridge Companions in Philosophy collection is available online via the database Cambridge Collections Online.