LibGuides: Arts and Culture: Reference works &amp; research skills materials

General works

Gale eBooks This link opens in a new window
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Multidisciplinary collection of subject dictionaries, encyclopedias and handbooks published by Gale Cengage, including the book series “International Directory of Company Histories”.
For a list of all available titles with their year of publication and ISBN indicated, click 'Title List' in the top right of the screen.
Oxford English Dictionary Online This link opens in a new window
Authoritative guide to the meaning, history, and pronunciation of words, past and present, from across the English-speaking world.
Includes a historical thesaurus: a taxonomic classification of the majority of senses and lemmas in OED Online.

Oxford Historical Thesaurus
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The Historical Thesaurus can be used in OED Online to navigate around the dictionary by topic, find related terms, and explore the lexical history of a concept or meaning.

Oxford Reference This link opens in a new window
Multidisciplinary collection of over 130 dictionaries and encyclopedias, plus thesauri and guides to English grammar and usage. The best choice for short academic definitions.
Oxford Reference indexes the content of several reference works on performing arts and art & architecture.

Subject-specific works

The SAGE International Encyclopedia of Music and Culture
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Presents key concepts in the study of music in its cultural context and provides an introduction to the discipline of ethnomusicology, its methods, concerns, and its contributions to knowledge and understanding of the world’s musical cultures, styles, and practices.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of the Internet
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Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology
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Encyclopedia on sociology and related sciences.
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This database contains articles and links on subjects, theories, research and persons. It is an important reference for experts and newcomers and entries vary from short definitions of key terms to extended explorations of major topics. Updated regular.
Encyclopedia of Play in Today's Society
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Encyclopedia covering the concept of 'play' in history and in modern society, for children and adults worldwide (2009).
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In this encyclopedia all aspects of play - from learning to competition, mastery of nature, socialization, and cooperation - are included.
Encyclopedia of Urban Studies
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An internationally orientated encyclopedia intended to provide comprehensive coverage of topics currently studied in urban studies.
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Specific attention is paid to the study of urban areas (such as urban anthropology, urban economics, urban geography, urban politics, urban psychology, and urban sociology), to professional fields such as architecture and urban planning, and to other fields such as art, literature, and photography that are situated within the built environment.
References for further reading on each topic are provided.
Gale Virtual Reference Library Encyclopedia of Management
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General information as well as a link to other management concepts, related terms, references, and electronic databases and information sources.
International Encyclopedia of Communication
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Entries ranging from extended explorations of major topics, to short definitions of key terms, in the field of communication studies.
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Entries are written by leading experts in the field and give references and suggested readings.
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences
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Includes lemmas on Culture and the Arts
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Contains over 3900 articles on communication, behavioral sciences, social sciences, psychology and education theory.
International Encyclopedia of Revolution and Protest: 1500 to the present
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Covers the history of protest and revolution over the past 500 years throughout the modern era of mass movements.
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Entries are classified by key topic, subject, place, people, and period. Items can be found by searching, browsing, and cross-referencing.

Research methods & tools

Methods & tools for doing academic research

TDM Studio This link opens in a new window
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TDM Studio provides a platform for text and data mining and data visualization of EUR subscribed ProQuest content. TDM studio comprises a data visualization platform - requiring no further knowledge of programming languages - and a TDM workbench , accessible with R and Python.
You can self-sign-up for a TDM Studio account by:
1. Navigating to tdmstudio.proquest.com
2. Creating an account using your ERNA email address.
Sage Research Methods Online (SRMO) This link opens in a new window
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SRMO helps you to answer your research methods and design questions, with over 100,000 pages of book, journal and reference content. The Cases offer hundreds of case studies of actual research projects. They add nuance and context to the more theoretical material found in SRMO.
SRMO contains
- dictionaries, encyclopedias, and handbooks;
- the entire "Little Green Book" series (Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences) and "Little Blue Book" series;
- two major works collating a selection of journal articles and
- newly commissioned videos.
One of the features is The Methods Map. This is a visualization tool that can be used to discover relationships between methods, to discover new methods and to find content related to them. Underpinning the Methods Map is a new taxonomy of social science research methods, developed by Sage, and containing over 1,400 unique terms.

Related databases: Safari: O’Reilly’s Learning Platform for Higher Education
O’Reilly This link opens in a new window
This platform provides access to thousands of e-books, video courses, learning tracks and conference videos on e.g. data science, computer programming, as well as e-books covering all scientific disciplines and non technical subjects.
Note: Users need to sign up for an account at O'Reilly to get full access to the Safari learning platform. Without an account only temporarily access is granted.