Welcome to the new academic year, and to a new term of iSkills and Referencing workshops. The workshops are run by Bodleian Libraries, they are free, and they are a fantastic opportunity to develop your research and study skills. The sessions range from Open Access publishing; measuring research impact; managing research data; reference management tools, finding relevant material for your research, and more. To view the full programme, visit the LibGuides website. Courses are free, but online booking is required.
Workshops in Week 1
Bodleian iSkills: Your thesis, copyright and ORA (Tue 10 October 10.00-11.00) Week 1
Oxford DPhil students are required to deposit a copy of their thesis in ORA (Oxford University Research Archive). This session will focus on copyright and other issues that DPhil students need to take into account when preparing their thesis for upload to ORA.
Who is this session for? Doctoral research students
Bodleian iSkills: Getting started in Oxford Libraries (Thu 12 October 09.30-12.30) Week 1; repeated in Week 4
An introduction to Oxford Libraries, covering guidance on which libraries to use; accessing e-journals, other online resources, SOLO and other finding aids; and making the most of Library services.
Who is this session for? Anyone who would like an introduction to Oxford Libraries.
Workshops in Week 2
Referencing: Choosing and using software (Tue 17 October 09.15-12.15) Week 2; repeated in Week 5
Formatting your in text citations/footnotes and bibliography correctly for your thesis or publication is a chore. Reference management software makes it easier and saves you time. This introductory session gives an overview of how reference management works, explores the pros and cons of a wide range of reference management packages and gives you the opportunity to try out five different packages so that you can work out which one is best for you. The packages included are RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero, Mendeley, ColWiz and Papers.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers.
Bodleian iSkills: UK parliamentary and government materials – an introduction (Wed 18 October 10.00-11.30) Week 2
Of vital help to all history students is this general overview of the main sources for finding and accessing historical UK parliamentary material, pre-1800 and post-1800. We look at sources for government publications both in print and in electronic format, including: Parliamentary proceedings – Hansard, Journals of the House of Commons and Lords; Legislation; Government and departmental papers.
Who is this session for? History, Politics and other Social Science students, in particular anyone just starting their Postgraduate studies
Bodleian iSkills: Moving from research question to literature review in the Social Sciences (Thu 19 October 10.00-12.00) Week 2
This 2-hour workshop will be invaluable for researchers hoping to find suitable literature for their literature review, for which a well-constructed set of search terms and an understanding of online search engines are prerequisites. This workshop will allow researchers to use their own research questions to build a search and apply it to a range of databases. Techniques for structuring a search will be explained, an overview of key online resources for the social sciences will be given , major search tools will be explored, and strategies for approaching large results sets and sourcing papers will be discussed. This practical workshop will involve paper exercises and online activities using attendees own research topics.
Who is this session for? All DPhil Students and Research Staff in the Social Sciences