This week: Spolight on assignments

Need advice on how to research your assignments? 
Could do with help on planning and presenting your work?
We are putting on a special week of training sessions on the skills you need to research, plan and present your assignments.

The sessions are free and open to all students of the University

• no need to book, just turn up
• each session is 1 hour long
• come to as many sessions as you like

More information is available on the Learning Resources website.  If you can't make any of the Microsoft Office sessions this week, remember you can always book to see our ICT Trainer for Polhill, Linda Martin.

Annotated bibliographies: New RefWorks layout

You may already be using our referencing management software, RefWorks.  This month we have launched a new output style for people working on annotated bibliography assignments.  The output style is called Harvard - UoB - Annotated Bibliography. 

Add your references to RefWorks in the usual way. Then click on 'Edit' (the pencil icon next to the reference) and add your notes to the 'Personal Notes' field. The 'personal notes' field in RefWorks fits a lot of text (I don't know if there is a limit but it fits two pages of A4 text easily!)

Repeat this for each reference.  When you are ready to generate your bibliography, set the output style to Harvard - UoB - Annotated Bibliography.  Your reference list will then be formatted with the reference in the University style with the notes underneath.

The example above also illustrates that you can group references together by adding them to folders.  So these two references are in a folder called 'Jill's Essay'.  You can add an individual reference to more than one folder.

EThOS: Free Downloads Of UK Dissertations/Theses From The British Library

If you are working on a dissertation or an advanced research project, you may want to read other people's PhDs. Searching a database like the British Education Index often brings back citations to theses (as well as conference papers and journal articles).

EThOS aims to provide a single point of access to all the theses produced by UK Higher Education researchers.  You can search for published UK theses and request a copy electronically using this online service. Currently not all published theses are available electronically so EThOS will digitise them for you (for which there is a short delay). To explore the service go to the EThOS website and register.

EThOS is run by the British Library.  The British Library has created a 'central hub' (an e-store and a digitisation suite at its Boston Spa site).  The hub automatically harvests e-theses from Institutional Repositories and digitises paper theses from participating institutions to offer the single point of access.  The University of Bedfordshire is part of this scheme.

Referencing Teachers.TV videos

 We have had several queries over the last few days about how to reference videos from the Teachers.tv website.  Referencing YouTube videos, vodcasts and other online streams is still evolving.  I would recommend you use the following ordering in your reference lists:

 

Author

Year that the site was published/last updated (in round brackets)

Title of vodcast (in single quotation marks)

Title of Internet site (in italics)

Available at: URL

(Accessed: date)

 

Each UoB library has a good book called Cite Them Right (http://library.beds.ac.uk/record=b1432471~S20) which covers every type of resource you can think of: blogs; wikis; dances; statues...  It is only £6.99 so I've got a copy by my phone to help me with student (and staff) referencing queries.  For the price of three cups of coffee, it has definitely been worth it!

 

 

 

Electrical shut down on 6th and 7th November

The Library Catalogue and all related services (access to e-journals, e-books, databases, renewals, reservations, self service equipment etc.) will be unavailable on the weekend of Saturday 6th and Sunday 7th November. The LRC at Park Square will also be closed.

Other services likely to be affected are BREO, printing, timetabling, student e-mail and the LRweb page.

Some resources may still be accessible via: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/faq/UK-Access-Management-Federation

Generation Y - How do you search?

A three-year research study into the information-seeking behaviour of students born between 1982 and 1994 has painted a picture of typical 'Generation Y' researcher.

• heavy users of university's library collections, primarily online but also in person (varies across subjects)
• regularly use inter-library lending services
• had limited access to computers and the internet before secondary school but now are confident information-seekers.  Arts and humanities students find Google generates unhelpful overload of research resources and science and maths students prefer subject-related databases
• rely on journals, both physical and electronic, often beyond the institutional subscriptions
• do not like formal research skills training, especially delivered in groups
• readily embrace technology and applications if the new tools complement existing ways of working, clearly benefits our research and support is readily available.

Does this sound like you?  Does it sound like nonsense?

Both Adele and I do/have done research projects alongside their day-to-day jobs so we can sympathise with a lot of the headaches and priorities that you have.  We can give you tailored help and advice about getting the most of the Digital Library and Web2.0 gizmos that can help manage your research at Uni, at home and on the move.  Just send us an email or telephone to arrange a date, time and place for the chat.  We can even meet you in Costas - the wireless reception in there is great!

What does "WebBridge" mean?

When you search a journals database, you will spot this little WebBridge icon on your results pages.

 

If you are searching a database like Education Research Complete your results can include links to the full text of the article (usually as a PDF).  This is a simple and quick way to read the article.  But two education databases - British Education Index or ERIC - search results only have citations; a citation tells you who wrote it (the Author), the article title and the details of where it was published ie the journal's name, date (this might include the volume and issue number) and the page numbers.  

 

So, WebBridge is a quick way of checking the journal title in the citation against the University's subscriptions. Clicking the icon opens a small WebBridge window.  You then have the option to check the catalogue for a matching journal.  Sometimes there will also be the option to match the citation against our main journals provider, EBSCO.  (EBSCO is simply a big journals supplier we use - think of it like checking your Sky TV for the History Channel).

 

Lots of people find it helpful to duplicate their search results before they start using WebBridge.  This means you will always have a window open with your results list.  You can duplicate your window by 

• clicking CTRL/N to open a new window, or, 
• right-clicking on the tab where your results are displayed and selecting Duplicate Tab.

 This flowchart describes another way of working from a citation to getting a copy of the original journal article.