Welcome to 23 Things for Research! This week we’ll cover Things 1-3, which will help you get started with the programme and set up a blog to share your thoughts and progress. We’ll always post each week’s new Things by 9am on Monday morning, so you can schedule them into your work week.

Before you get going on a blog, Thing 1 asks you to take some time and read about the programme and its goals. 23 Things is a self-directed course that aims to expose you to a range of digital tools that could help you in your personal and professional development as a researcher, academic, student or in another role. The aim is for you to spend a little time each week over Michaelmas Term, building up and expanding your skills. Each week, we’ll talk about one or more of the tools/tasks from our 23 Things programme and encourage you to try it out and reflect on it. We hope that the programme presents a realistic challenge and will allow you to fit it into your schedule. You may wish to take a look at the full programme so that you can plan ahead. Talk to your colleagues and find out who is also taking part; one of the biggest benefits of 23 Things is the community that it creates.

23 Things for Research is part of Engage: Social Media Michaelmas, a term-long programme of events run by a team from IT Services and the Bodleian Libraries. We’ll be running events, training and workshops, often focused on the Things of the week. We hope that these will help you learn about the tools we introduce here, give you a chance to find out how others in the research community are using digital and social tools in their work and meet others who are taking part in the programme.

We’ll be here to support you throughout the programme, so feel free to get in touch if you have any questions! You’re always welcome to leave a comment here on the blog, but you can also email any of the team members (see All About 23 Things) or tweet @ltgoxford or @bodleianlibs with the hashtag #OxEngage.

If you want to stay up to date with the 23 Things programme without having to come to the blog daily, subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed. We’ll be covering Twitter later on in the programme, but if you feel comfortable with it now you may want to set up a saved search for #OxEngage or follow @ltgoxford or @bodleianlibs now.

Once you’ve had a chance to read about the programme, feel free to move straight on to Thing 2.