The Discovering strand will help you develop the skills you need to find subject specific information easily. This is useful if you are reading to prepare for a lecture or seminar, need to find resources for research, or want to go beyond your reading list resources for an assignment. Here you will find resources covering: how to use LibrarySearch, how to build effective search terms, how to use Boolean operators, and citation searching in LibrarySearch and databases.
The Evaluating strand will help you develop the skills you need to critically evaluate information so you're able to select reliable and appropriate information in your research and assignments. These skills are useful for helping identify fake news and misinformation, poor quality research and unreliable information. Content includes: podcasts on misinformation and filter bubbles, understanding and applying a framework for critical evaluation, and how to select the most suitable type of resources for different situations.
Due to the interdisciplinary nature of Liberal Arts, you will need to use a wide variety of library resources. Please go to the Library Resources A-Z List and filter by the appropriate subject.
The resources below cover a range of subjects.
A multidisciplinary database provides high-quality research on a wide range of topics including but not limited to social sciences, humanities, science, and education.
Gale Academic OneFile, provides millions of articles from over 17,000 scholarly journals and other authoritative sources, including videos from BBC Worldwide Learning to thousands of podcasts and transcripts from CNN. It includes more than 11,000 peer-reviewed journals (more than 8,000 in full text), and major reference sets including Gale Encyclopaedia of Science and Encyclopaedia of World Biography.
Gale Research Complete provides access to a variety of primary and secondary sources. From literary criticism and full text literary works to rare primary source content and news, this resource is packed full of information covering a variety of subjects. You can find details on what each database contains on the Gale menu page after you login, but here is a brief snapshot of what you can find:
Gale Virtual Reference Library
News sources (current and historical)
Gale Primary Sources, including several archival collections e.g. Holocaust sudies
Humanities Source Ultimate offers a wide variety of resources ideal for scholars of languages, literature, religion and philosophy, history and the visual and performing arts. With feature articles, interviews, obituaries, bibliographies, book reviews, original works of fiction, musicals, operas and plays, this database provides access to research that illuminates human thinking, action and interaction.
Hundreds of international full-text journals from North America, Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe and Latin America bring a global perspective to researching the human experience. With locally published content integrated with region-specific authoritative resources from all over the globe, Humanities Source Ultimate provides unparalleled coverage of regional news pertinent to the humanities.
A multi-disciplinary databases with access to more than 12 million academic journal articles, books, and primary sources in 75 disciplines, as well as over 3 million images.
Quick tips on searching JSTOR
Over 300 humanities, arts, and social sciences journals from 60 scholarly publishers. Subjects covered include cinema, cultural studies, drama, history, literature, mathematics, modern languages, philosophy, politics, religion, and sociology.Most journals available online from 1995 or 1996 onwards
PDF guide to searching Project MUSE
Video Tutorials on using Project MUSE (YouTube)
An index of journal articles and book reviews across a range of subjects, with coverage from 1970.
To access our resources off-campus, you can use Royal Holloway's VPN, which will simulate on-campus access.
If you are not using Royal Holloway's VPN, you may be asked for a login. In this instance you can use your College username and password (which you normally use to access Moodle).
More information on accessing e-resources can be found in our Accessing Eresources page.
BoB is a viewing and off-air recording and media archive service which allows you to search for, watch and also record from a list of recorded channels. You can also create clips, search for programmes coming up, create playlists and share them with others.
BoB is only available in the UK.
Kanopy is an on-demand streaming video platform that offers films, documentaries and educational videos.
OneFile News is a full-text international newspaper resource that allows users to quickly search and compare news articles published worldwide.
A collection of historical archives (modern to present), newspapers and periodicals (17th to 19th centuries) including:
Archives Unbound
Daily Mail Historical Archive
The Economist Historical Archive
The Illustrated London News Historical Archive
Nineteenth Century UK Peridicals - Empire
Political Extremism and Radicalism
State Papers Online Colonial
Nexis provides access to a wide range of UK and international newspapers. It also includes a collection of in-depth company profiles and industry reports covering millions of public and private companies.
Regional Business News provides full-text regional business publications for the United States and Canadian provinces. You can search newspapers, magazines and other resources from different news sources.
The link below will help you find Royal Holloway PhD theses, UK theses through British Library's EThOS service and theses and dissertations from other countries through ProQuest.
The online academic edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, including articles, biographies, images, videos and a world atlas. The 'Compare Countries' tool shows a range of facts and statistics for different countries.
The online version of the OED including over 500,000 definitions, together with etymological analysis and variant spellings. Traces the development of English from 1150 AD to the present.
Video tutorial on using the Oxford English Dictionary
Over 100 general reference works, language dictionaries and subject dictionaries covering languages, science and medicine, humanities, social sciences and business.
A series of online research guides in a range of subjects including American Literature, British and Irish Literature, Cinema and Media Studies, Victorian Literature, Geography, Classics and Philosophy. Each guide contains a series of articles introducing key topics, and lists recommended readings about each topic.
Video user guide (YouTube)
Through this link you will find more information about accessing Senate House's physical and online resources, as well as information about accessing libraries at other institutions.