Bodleian iSkills is a series of workshops designed for postgraduates and researchers, covering information discovery and searching for scholarly materials, keeping up to date with research, using reference management tools, research data management and open access publishing.  For Michaelmas term, most of the workshops will continue to run online.

The workshops are FREE but online booking is essential. A list of the sessions taking place this term can be found on the iSkills Workshops webpage.

Introduction to Oxford Libraries

iSkills: Getting started in Oxford Libraries (Tue 1 Feb 10:00-12:00; repeated Thu 17 Feb 10:00-12:00)

An introduction to getting started in Oxford Libraries, featuring live demonstrations and hands-on activities on how to use SOLO, the University’s resource discovery tool; how to search for a range of material and get hold of what you want to read; which Oxford Libraries to use for your needs and how to use our many services.

Literature searching and finding scholarly materials

iSkills: Finding stuff – scholarly literature for your research (Mon 7 Feb 14:00-16:00; repeated Wed 16 Feb 10:00-12:00)

How to run effective literature searches for books, journal articles, conference materials, theses and dissertations from the University of Oxford and around the world.

iSkills: Keeping up to date with research (Mon 21 Feb 14:00-15:30)

An introduction to keeping up to date with research in your field by setting up and managing alerts on databases and other scholarly platforms.

iSkills: Preparing for your literature review in the Social Sciences (Tue 1 Mar 10:00-11:30)

Using your own research questions to build a successful search in the Social Sciences; working effectively with large result sets; sourcing highly cited papers relevant to your research; setting up alerts on your topic.

iSkills: UK Parliamentary and Government materials – an introduction (Thursdays from 27 Jan to 3 Mar)

One-to-one sessions for finding and accessing historical and present-day UK parliamentary and government material, including print and digital sources, and any relevant archival materials.

Reference Management Workshops

We offer workshops on three reference management tools for Windows and Mac users, which help you build libraries of references, insert references into your Word document as in-text citations or footnotes and automatically generate bibliographies:

Referencing: Endnote (Thu 27 Jan 10:00-12:00; repeated Tue 15 Feb 14:00-16:00)

Referencing: RefWorks (Fri 11 Feb 14:00-15:30; repeated Thu 24 Feb 10:00-11:30)

Referencing: Zotero (Mon 14 Feb 14:00-15:00; repeated Thu 3 Mar 10:00-11:00)

Open Access

Open Access Oxford: What’s happening? (Runs monthly – next one Mon 17 Jan 15:00-16:00)
A briefing on open access publishing and Oxford’s position including guidance on how to comply with the Open Access requirements for the REF and mandates from key funding bodies whilst respecting your publisher’s rights and policies. Will cover Gold and Green routes and Article Processing Charges; University policy for the Open Access block grants including RCUK/UKRI and Wellcome Trust.  The briefing is intended for current Oxford researchers and academics, research support staff and librarians.

 Keep an eye on our iSkills workshops page for upcoming workshops throughout the year; and for our workshop handouts, live webinar recordings and pre-recorded video tutorials.