New support sessions coming up

Happy New Year and a warm welcome back from all in Information Learning Services.  We have been busy creating some support sessions on different aspects of research and information use recently.  We'll post the dates and times as soon as we have confirmation of room bookings etc., but in the meantime, here is an outline of what will be on offer.

Discover Discover - make sure you are getting the most out of the services offered by our main search tool.

Keeping Track of Your Reading - get to grips with alerting services for journal articles and other publications.

Research, Social Media and Getting Published - find out more about the concept of your digital footprint and key concerns with journal publications.

Open Access - the main issues surrounding making your publications available to all (from a library point of view).

Impact Factor, Altmetrics, Influence and All That Jazz - an introduction to the main methods of measuring the impact and influence of research, available from the library.

Introducing RaY - an introduction to York St John's research repository.

Merry Christmas from ILS

Photo by Judith Hodgson

Please remember that the ground floor of Fountains is open 24/7 throughout the Christmas vacation but ILS staff will be out of the office from 24/12/2013 - 04/01/2014. Check the FAQ section of our website if you need assistance during that time.

We from ILS wish all researchers a very happy and restful holiday season and all the best for 2014.

EndNote and RefWorks

Are you using EndNote to manage your references? We know that a few of you still are and we've recently discovered that there has been some confusion about how and whether you can still access this software. Under the terms of the EndNote license, we can only offer individual EndNote installations on YSJ on-campus computers. This is why you might have access on a few PCs in the Grad Centre but not at home.

You can read more about it in the original blog posting from June.

Our access to the reference management software RefWorks is unlimited and web-based, so you can use it across all devices and in all locations. Clare has created a 10 Days of RefWorks course, with little videos and lessons that will get you up and running with a RefWorks account. Alternatively, we offer workshops and 1-2-1 tutorials on managing your references. Your Academic Liaison Librarian would be happy to tell you more.

DigiMap Training 14 January

YSJ recently purchased access to the DigiMap Ordnance Survey database in order to support the new Human Geography course. You can use DigiMap 'to view, annotate and print maps from a variety of geospatial data providers ... [as well as] download geospatial data for use in CAD and GIS systems.'

If maps might be useful to your research, have a look at DigiMap (you'll need to register with the service first). YSJ is hosting a training on DigiMap on Wednesday 14 January 2015 from 9:00-11:30AM. You find out more and register using this form, or contact Leah if you have any further questions.

Doctoral Students Open Day at the British Library

We've had an invitation from the British Library for doctoral students.  Would you like to find out more about their collections and services in your area of research?  Here's what we have been told is on offer...

These open days are taking place in January and February to introduce new PhD students to the Library. Students will learn about the collections, find out how to access them, and meet the expert staff as well as other researchers in their field. In addition to an understanding of the Library’s collections, the students gain a wider introduction to the information landscape in their field including research opportunities opening up in digital environment.  Each Open Day has a specific focus and students are welcome to attend the event they feel is most relevant to their area of research.

Full details of all the Open Days, including how to book, are available on the BL website - http://www.bl.uk/events?eventrelated_filtername=doctoral-open-days

Places cost £5.00 and this includes lunch.

Other views of research

Lately we have been looking around at how different groups view and experience research.  An interesting take can been seen in an overview of a project by celebyouth.org, based in the School of Sport & Education at Brunel University and a collaboration with Manchester Metropolitan University. The group's aim was to look at the significance celebrities have in the construction of young people's aspirations. They have used their experiences to help inform others researching similar areas when it comes to the methods employed and this looks very useful to a number of our research areas, including Children, Young People and Education.  This includes negotiating access to schools for a research project, dilemmas encountered with youth-centred research, and ethical issues surrounding archiving data once collected.

Have a look at their recommendations if you think this may help inform your research methods.

New Arts and Humanities Databases

Anyone doing research in the Arts and Humanities will be pleased to know that we have purchased access to ProQuest's Art, Design and Architecture database collection. ProQuest describes the collection as:

Image of the ProQuest Art, Design and Architecture Collection homepage

"A comprehensive survey of current publications in the fields of visual and applied arts. This collection includes the specialist indexes ARTbibliographies Modern (covering modern and contemporary art), Design and Applied Arts Index (for all aspects of design and crafts) and the International Bibliography of Art (covering scholarship on Western art history), together with a complementary collection of current full-text journals, Arts and Humanities Full Text."