Library Subject Guides
As an Archaeology student, you are expected to find and use high quality literature. You'll need to use a range of different sources and demonstrate your ability to find good results in order to impress your tutors and to develop your research skills.
Books can be a great place to start your reading around a topic.
Architecture books are located within the wider Art section, shelved under the letter L on the second floor of the JB Morrell Library. There is also a selection of building conservation texts at the King's Manor Library. Many books will also be available online as e-books. Look for the links in YorSearch, under the View It section of each book.
| Shelf location | Subject |
|---|---|
| LA 1.4 | Urban Planning - physical |
| LB | Architecture |
| LD | Building Conservation |
| D1.3 | Environment - Human Ecology |
| DA 9.26 | Urban Planning - sociology |
This is a selection of free online architecture resources covering a range of topics and resource types.
Historic and contemporary newsreel, newspaper & magazine collections. These resources can be a valuable tool when researching, giving insight into how a specific topic has been perceived by the general public over time.
The University has access to Collection I.
The University has access to Collection 1 .
The Economist from 1997 onward is also available via YorSearch.
For access you need to register for a personal THE account at the site.
You must register using your York email address @york.ac.uk and create your own username and password (the username will display on public parts of the site e.g. comments).
For access off-campus please use the VPN.
All journal titles are listed on YorSearch, and can be found by searching the journal title.
If you don't have a specific title in mind, you can browse journals in your subject area on Browzine. Journals are organised by field of research, such as:
You can also search for journals on full text databases such as those shown below, but bear in mind that they are finite collections, so you could miss key articles on your topic. To find everything that has been published in a specific academic area you really need to use a bibliographic database.
For alumni access please see the Virtual Library JSTOR section on Alumni Learning.
To start a more detailed search for articles and other research evidence, you'll need to use bibliographic databases. These are large indexes that allow you to search for articles from hundreds of different journals at the same time. The databases do not necessarily give you access to the full text, instead they will usually include the citation information and a brief abstract that gives a summary of the work. If you find citations for resources that we don't hold at York you can request the full text via the "Tell us what you need" link on YorSearch.
The University holds many subject specific bibliographic databases as listed below. If your work is more interdisciplinary we recommend using one of the larger databases such as Web of Science which, despite the name, covers all subject areas and allows you to search effectively across multiple disciplines.
You can still access Business Source Premier on the Classic interface until 31st December 2025. See MyEBSCO data for how to access data on the New UI saved in MyEBSCO on the Classic interface. There is also important information about Custom Folders, which have not been migrated to the New UI.
The FileOpen plugin is required to open downloaded PDFs in your PDF reader. FileOpen is available on University PCs. For other devices and for further information and advice see the British Standards Institution site (under DRM- Digital Rights Management). Please note that you must open downloaded PDFs in a PDF reader not in your browser.
Only British and British adopted standards are included in the University's subscription. You will not have access to unadopted ASTM, ISO and IEC standards.
You will need to register for an account the first time you access Digimap.
You can still access GreenFILE on the Classic interface until 31st December 2025. See MyEBSCO data for how to access data on the New UI saved in MyEBSCO on the Classic interface. There is also important information about Custom Folders, which have not been migrated to the New UI.
You can still access Business Source Premier on the Classic interface until 31st December 2025. See MyEBSCO data for how to access data on the New UI saved in MyEBSCO on the Classic interface. There is also important information about Custom Folders, which have not been migrated to the New UI.
Please note that the University has access to the core Statista database. You will not have access to Statista Global Consumer Survey and Statista Company Database.
Information about theses is available on the main Library website.
All University PhD and MPhil theses are available in the Library in hard copy (find them using YorSearch). For Masters theses, only certain Departments make these available via our Digital Collections, which you can find linked to in the top pane in YorSearch.
All York PG Research students are required to upload their thesis into the White Rose Research Online, a shared online respository for academic publications from the Universities of York, Sheffield and Leeds. You can also access theses from outside the University:
Archives hold unique collections of unpublished sources. They can be an essential tool in Humanities research, offering access to a wealth of manuscripts, personal records, popular ephemera, diaries and more. Although archives may offer digital access to some of their key resources, the majority of archival collections are physical holdings that may never have been fully indexed. When consulting archives you may find only minimal searchable information about the collection - for example that the archive holds 6 boxes of papers relating to that person or thing. Archivists may be able to help you narrow down your search a little further, but it is not unusual for researchers to have to sift through the bulk of materials themselves. Although this can feel intimidating, it can also present opportunities to be the first researcher to ever study a specific resource.
The University of York's Borthwick Institute for Archives holds materials of local, national and international importance dating from the 11th cenury to the present day. Their collections cover a vast range of disciplines, from Arts & Performance and 20th Century Politics through to Natural Sciences and Healthcare from the 18th-20th centuries (particularly relating to mental health). You can search the Borthwick's archives using their catalogue Borthcat. For guidance on how to search their collections effectively please see the Archives Skills Guide.
To discover archival collections across the UK please see the links below.
