UEA Library has purchased a subscription to Underground and Independent Comics. You can read comics from the 1940s onwards, plus The Comics Journal (news and criticism).
Tag Archives: online sources
The Public Domain Review
The Public Domain Review is “dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works from the history of art, literature, and ideas”, especially works in the public domain.
It has essays on a variety of topics. For example:
- Loos, Lewdness, and Literature: Tales from the Boghouse
- The Dancing Plague of 1518
- Frolicsome Engines: The Long Prehistory of Artificial Intelligence
- Forgotten Failures of African Exploration
There are also collections of images, books, films and sound recordings.
YouTube Audio Library
Need background music or sound effects for your video or slideshow? A previous post suggested the Free Music Archive. Another option is the Audio Library from YouTube.
Music tracks are categorized by genre (e.g. ambient, cinematic, classical, pop, reggae) and mood (dark, funky, sad, etc.). You can listen to them online and download them as MP3 files.
Here is “Bubble Walk” by Aaron Lieberman (categorized as ambient and funky):
There is also a large collection of sound effects. These include Creaking Wooden Door, Dissecting a Body, Human Eating Watermelon, Subway NYC In Motion, Thunderstorm, Laundromat Sounds and so on.
This is a Monster Alien Grunt Hiss:
Study skills from Manchester Uni
The University of Manchester Library has some online resources on study skills. For example:
- Dissertations: choosing your topic
- Never a wasted word: writing your essay
- Present like a pro: the art of delivery
There are many others – on maths, referencing, revision, statistics, reading, research, etc.
Stack Exchange
Stack Exchange is a collection of questions and answers on numerous topics.
Some questions from English Language & Usage:
- What is the rule for adjective order?
- What do you call a disk with a hole in the middle?
- When should “no problem” replace “you’re welcome” as a response to “thank you”?
- What is the difference between “complicated” and “complex”?
Some questions from English Language Learners:
- How should I refer to a friend who is a girl but not a girlfriend?
- Is there any difference between “which” and “that”?
- What is the difference between “nope” and “no”?
- Is it OK to mix American and British English?
IELTS Mentor
There aren’t many free practice materials for IELTS on the internet. A website that has recently been recommended by our IELTS teacher Malle is IELTS Mentor. It includes:
- 300+ academic reading passages, with questions and answers
- 300+ examples of academic writing task 1 (graphs), with model answers
- 1200+ examples of academic writing task 2 (essays), with model answers
- many other resources.
See our IELTS page for links to other sites.
JournalTOCs
JournalTOCs is a collection of the tables of contents of 33,000 academic journals.
You can search for journals, “follow” them and read their tables of contents online. You can also choose to receive emails when new issues come out, or set up an RSS feed.
If UEA has access to a journal, you can read an article by clicking on the link in the table of contents.
A similar service is Zetoc.
Free Music Archive
If you need background music for a video or slideshow, you could try the Free Music Archive.
The music is arranged by genre – Blues, Classical, Country, Electronic, etc. – and then sub-genre, such as Rock > Loud-Rock > Noise-Rock > Sludge. (More suitable, perhaps, as background music are genres such as Instrumental > Ambient.)
Tracks can be downloaded as mp3 files and then added to your project. Most of them have Creative Commons licences such as Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike.
Trial of library resources
UEA Library has trial access to some online resources. They are expensive, so the library needs to know which are worth keeping. They are:
- Archives of Sexuality & Gender
- British Periodicals Collections
- Cecil Papers
- Drama Texts Collection
- Film Scripts Online
- Informit Indigenous Archive
- International Herald Tribune
- LGBT Magazine Archive
- Nichols Newspapers Collection
- Picture Post Historical
- Punch Historical Archive, 1841-1992
- Revolution and Protest Online
- The Telegraph Historical Archive, 1855-2000
- Underground and Independent Comics, Comix, and Graphic Novels
- US Declassified Documents Online
- Women’s Studies Archive
There is more information on tag (UEA Library blog). You can access all the resources via Find Databases.
Studying Economics
Studying Economics offers advice, help and information for economics undergraduates. Besides the tips on study skills, careers, etc., there are some distractions – links to economics-related videos, songs, games, etc.
For example, there’s a catchy song from the Bank of Ghana about their new currency unit and a video of Yoram Bauman, Ph.D., a “stand-up economist”, in which he simplifies Gregory Mankiw’s 10 Principles of Economics for a general audience:
Economic data online
Economic Data freely available online is a collection of links to economic and market data in the UK and other countries.
Do you know what the current inflation rate is in Uzbekistan? The Asian Development Bank can tell you.*
The links are compiled by John Sloman, a name that should be familiar to INTO economics students, for The Economics Network.
*14% for 2019 (forecast)
Ten online resources
Ten resources for today’s teacher training session:
- BoB
Recorded TV and radio programmes that you can watch and clip - Statista
Statistics and charts on business, industries, consumer habits, etc. - Credo Reference
Cross-referenced collection of reference books - Academic Phrasebank
Phrases used in academic writing - Cite them right online
Referencing tips and examples - BrowZine
UEA Library’s academic journals arranged by subject for easy browsing - Nexis
Database of newspapers - Smithsonian.com
Online magazine from the museum with articles on science, history, culture, etc. - Microsoft Forms
For making online surveys and quizzes (example). See also Google Forms. - Pixabay
Copyright-free images and videos
physics.org
physics.org is a guide to physics on the web, published by the Institute of Physics in Britain.
You can search its database of 4,000 physics websites or do some experiments, like the one pictured. There is also information about courses and careers.
Fan fiction
If you’re looking for something to read online, there is always fan fiction.
For example, FanFiction has 50,000 stories based on the Star Wars movies and 800,000 inspired by the Harry Potter books. The TV series Father Ted, on the other hand, has produced a measly 15 stories.
On a similar site, Archive of Our Own, there are 50,000 works about the band One Direction. For instance, Fading is 202,393 words, about twice the length of an average novel, and has been translated into Spanish. It starts like this:
Louis almost snaps when there is a light tap on the door of the studio. His knuckles go white on the edge of the cutting table but he forces himself to take a deep breath and put on a smile before he turns around. He isn’t the type to take his frustrations out on others, he prefers to take them out on himself. When he turns he finds Liam poking his head just past the door frame, hesitant to come in and disturb Louis.
Only 202,309 words to go!
FanFiction has a rating system for its stories: basically, K = Kids, T = Teens, M = Mature. The site “does not accept explicit content”. Archive of Our Own’s rating system is G = General, T = Teen, M = Mature, E = Explicit. A lot of fan fiction describes romantic/sexual relationships and this is normally indicated at the beginning of the story, along with any other content warnings.
News sources online
If you want to read the day’s news in English, here are some sources:
- BBC News
- Independent
- Guardian
- Mail Online
- Sky News
- Google News
- Reuters
- New York Times
- CNN
- NBC News
- HuffPost
- Al Jazeera
- RT (Russia Today)
- China Daily
- South China Morning Post
In addition, Nexis provides access to hundreds of news sources in various languages.
