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Garden History for Continuing Education: Finding articles

A guide to finding information on Garden History and the Designed Landscape

Key Journal

Key resource

Country Life Archive

Archive of the weekly magazine Country Life from 1897-2005. Contains many articles on country houses and their gardens. Images from Country Life can be seen in the Country Life Picture Library

Key Bibliographic Databases

Here are some useful bibliographic databases for Garden History:

  Finding specific journal articles

If you're looking for a particular journal article,  you can search for the journal title in SOLO. SOLO will find references to both print and electronic journals. You can access e-journals from the PCs in the Library or any other PC on the University network. If you have a University card, you can access e-journals from any internet connection using your Single Sign On

Finding articles on your topic: quick ways to search

 You can use the Journal Articles search on SOLO  to find articles on your topic - just click the 'Articles & More' tab and enter your search. You will be able to access many articles online. You can use all the usual SOLO tools for refining your search, sorting results and you can save results to your e-Shelf. For more information, see the SOLO Guide

You can also search for journal articles in Google Scholar and use the 'Find it @ Oxford' link to the to access electronic versions. Scholar is the largest database of scholarly literature and gives you quick, relevant results. However, it lacks search tools and gives too many results sometimes.

More thorough literature searches

For more structured literature searching you should use a bibliographic database. These act as subject indexes to journals and often include conference papers, research reports, book extracts etc. as well. Most databases are linked to Oxford holdings - look for the 'Find it @ Oxford' link.

If you know the title of the database you wish to use (for example one of the Key Bibliographic Databases listed on this page) you can search for it on SOLO. To browse a list of available bibliographic databases, go to SOLO and enter a general subject area. Then select the 'Resource Type' drop down in the left hand column and then 'Databases' within that.

Using a bibliographic databases enables you to conduct a more precise search. You can also check the coverage of the database. Make use of on screen help and links to help text, Tutorials etc to get the best out of a database.

 

Can't I just search JSTOR?

JSTOR logoJSTOR is a multi-disciplinary, full text archive of key scholarly journals. It is a very useful resource as you can use it to search for articles on your topic, but remember:

  • JSTOR does not contain the latest issues,  you will need to look elsewhere for the most recent 3-5 years
  • JSTOR does not cover every journal title ever published

  Remote access

To access electronic journals and databases off campus:

Sign on to SOLO using your Single Sign On. This allows you to access most e-resources as if you were on campus. 

The Single Sign On is available to all students on award bearing courses who hold a full University card

For further information see the Bodleian Libraries remote access guide.

  Google Scholar tips

Google Scholar logo    

Here are some tips to get the best out of Google Scholar:

  • Use as many relevant keywords as possible when searching.
  • If you have a phrase "put it in quotation marks"
  • Use a minus sign before a word to exclude it from the search.
  • On campus you will have links to 'Find it at Oxford', off campus you can activate these by searching for Oxford on the Library Links option in Scholar Preferences.
  • If you use Endnote or Refworks you can set these as your bibliographic manager preference in Scholar Preferences.