This page contains information about the following information resources:
Library news for Economics & Public Policy
Visit the Economics & Public Policy Extra blog to keep up to date with new resources (both printed and electronic), Open Access, interesting events, useful websites and general library news.
Recent blog posts
WISE for Arts & Humanities, Laws, Social and Historical Sciences and SSEES
WISE is a comprehensive, step-by-step online guide to finding and using information effectively. Go to http://www.ucl.ac.uk/moodle, and log in with your UCL userid and password. Click on WISE and select WISE for Arts & Humanities, Laws, Social and Historical Sciences and SSEES to start the course (if WISE does not appear in your list of courses click on “All courses” in bottom right-hand corner then select WISE and register yourself on the course).
UCL is a partner in a project called Economists
Online. It aims to address the lack of integration of
academic output amongst premier economics institutions by
creating a powerful new research tool called Economists Online.
Economists Online provides access to RePEc material and the recent research results of hundreds of leading economists from numerous prestigious academic
institutions. It includes journal articles, working papers, book
chapters, conference proceedings and primary datasets - all
cross-searchable and accessible from a central multilingual portal.
The Library's collection of economics books is located in the Main Library, 1st floor, south end.
Finding books: The Library has its own classification scheme for arranging books on the shelves. Typically, a book will have a classmark which begins with the name of the subject (corresponding to the section of the Library in which the book can be found) followed by letters and numbers denoting its position on the shelves within that section; e.g.
ECONOMICS N 35 PEA for a book on environmental economics
ECONOMICS R 14 OSB for a book on game theory
However, material relating to economics can also be found in several other parts of Library Services including:
HISTORY (Main Library, South, 2nd floor); includes an
extensive collection on economic and social history.
LAW (Main Library, Donaldson Room, adjacent to the Flaxman Gallery); includes material
on the European Union.
PUBLIC POLICY (Main Library, South, 2nd floor); includes
books on the formulation of all aspects of government policy, including economics.
TOWN PLANNING (Environmental Studies Library, 5th floor);
has substantial material on topics such as sociology, housing and local authority
finance.
GEOGRAPHY (Science Library, 1st floor); is particularly
useful for additional material on development and environmental economics.
MANAGEMENT (Science Library, 2nd floor); contains some
textbooks on company finance and accounting.
Most economics journals are available online (see below). Recent printed copies are also available in the Main Library, divided into annual reports, statistical series and periodicals. Older issues can be ordered for next-day delivery from the Store: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/store
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Accessing electronic resources
Material in electronic form is available to registered members of UCL. If you are off-site, you will be prompted for your UCL userid and password. For more information, visit the Information for electronic Library resource users section of the Library Services website.
Electronic journals
A large number of journals are available electronically to registered members of UCL. Explore (available via the Library website) is a new search facility for accessing print and electronic materials. Alternatively, view an alphabetical list of electronic journals which UCL members have access to and link through to the journals from here.
Accessing The Economist & The Financial Times:
The Economist is accessible online back to 1992. For access, go to the list of e-journals, find and click on ‘The Economist’. You can search full-text for keywords, or browse the content of specific issues.
FT.com is also available (register for personalised functionality) from the list of e-journals. This provides access to ePapers of all five regional editions of The Financial Times with an archive back to 2005, Lex (opinion on topics in the news and broader impacts), special reports, markets data and mobile access.
The Financial Times, and many other full-text newspapers, are also available online through Nexis UK.
Databases
Explore allows you to search for material within a single resource or across a range of resources simultaneously and get instant access to the online full-text material we subscribe to. Databases should be used for conducting comprehensive research. In many cases databases include a link to the full-text version of a reference (look out for the SFX icon). For a complete list of the databases available at UCL, please see the list at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/library/database/
Useful economics databases include:
- EconLit, published by the American Economic Association, provides bibliographic coverage of a wide range of economics related literature.
- IBSS (International Bibliography of the Social Sciences) indexes journal articles and book chapters in social science subjects including anthropology, geography, economics and political sciences.
- JSTOR is a full-text archive of important scholarly journals.
- Nexis UK for full-text UK and international newspaper articles, and company information.
- OxResearch delivers succinct articles analysing economic and political developments worldwide, and evaluates issues within a coherent political, social and economic framework.
- Scopus indexes a wide range of material from scientific, medical, technical and social science areas.
- Web of Science is a multidisciplinary database that includes: the Science Citation Index, the Social Sciences Citation Index and the Arts & Humanities Citation Index. It indexes over 10,000 journals and is a useful starting point for searching on many topics.
Statistics
Useful sources of socioeconomic data are:
- UK Data Service provides the largest collection of digital data in the social sciences and humanities in the UK. It includes macroeconomic data from organisations such as the IMF and World Bank.
- OECD iLibrary has publications and statistics from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
- The SSEES Library has a Datastream terminal. This can be used to access extensive time series financial data.
- Passport GMID provides industry-specific datasets, coverage of relevant channels and products and reports by local analysts analysing the characteristics of countries.
- Bureau van Dijk is a leading provider of company reports. We have access to FAME (for UK & Irish companies), Amadeus (for European companies) and Osiris (for leading PLCs worldwide).
- ICPSR (Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research) acquires, preserves, enhances, and distributes original social science research data for research and instruction.
MetaLib
MetaLib is a gateway to UCL's electronic resources. You can access all of the above databases via Metalib and much more. Metalib allows cross-searching of resources - i.e. it is possible to search more than one database at a time. There are areas within MetaLib to store your search results and selected list of databases.
E-books
A growing number of e-books are available. Many of these you'll be able to find by searching Explore, either by author, title or keyword. A significant collection of e-books for politics is Oxford Scholarship Online, that includes a large number of Oxford University Press titles.
Additionally, the Library subscribes to electronic versions of Elsevier's Handbooks in Economics series. These are listed individually in Explore or can be accessed here.
OECD country guides and other series are available through the OECD iLibrary (see above).
Exam papers
Copies of past exam papers for many Economics courses are available online and can also be searched for via Explore. Printed copies can be found in the Main Library.
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UCL members can make use of a number of other libraries.
Particularly good for Economics students and staff, and all within walking distance, are:
Senate House Library all UCL members can join, borrow books and access online resources remotely.
LSE (British Library of Economic and Political Science) reference access only for undergraduates and taught postgraduates; borrowing for academic staff and research postgraduates.
SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies) a special arrangement allows UCL members to borrow books: more details.
British Library
Full information about using other libraries is available here.
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If you have any problems in using the Library, come to the Enquiry Desk, or contact the Subject Librarian for Economics, Political Science & History:
Kieron Jones
Main Library, South Corridor, Room 105
E-mail: kieron.jones@ucl.ac.uk
Telephone: internal: 3 3078; external: 020 7679 3078
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