DWLresearch

Xmas Holidays This is our last blog post before the Xmas Holidays. Remember that there will be no research librarians available during the University Closure days - from 12noon on Thursday 22nd December until we return on Tuesday 3rd January. If you need to see a research librarian before Xmas then you will need to make a morning appointment with Selina by emailing librarians@le.ac.uk The library building will still be open on some days over Xmas - check the opening hours . Thesis Submission If you wish to be included in the January graduation ceremony you must have submitted an eThesis and completed/signed Final Submission Form to the Library, along with a copy of your bound thesis or confirmation that your bound thesis will be delivered to us by Print Services in the New Year. All theses submitted during the closed period will be confirmed with the Graduate School Office on 3rd January 2017 and will be eligible for the January ceremony. For more information on submitt...

This week I've been finalising the next Research Elevenses series for January 2017.  Elevenses is our seminar series that provides briefings for researchers on the issues that matter. These can about new tools for research, policy updates, or methods of discovering information.  We will reveal the January program next week. Before we do, I thought I would take a look at the 'greatest hits'.  We record and republish the talks to share them widely. The viewing stats reveal that the following are the Top 5 most viewed recordings.  Click on the links below to watch the videos.  1. Unlocking the REF: Text mining to show your impact https://connect.le.ac.uk/p79lknoeq43/ 2. How can we help with your systematic review? https://connect.le.ac.uk/p4myej25euo/ 3. Demonstrating your impact   with the h-index https://connect.le.ac.uk/p51ud1gxajs/ 4. Making an (online) exhibition of yourself with Omeka.net https://connect...

Bookings are now open for our Spring workshops: Introduction to the Library Introduction to reference management Introduction to research data management Planning your literature search - online version Conducting your literature search - online version Introduction to EndNote - online tutorial Introducing RefWorks - online tutorial Pubmed vs Medline Who is citing who? - video version Making research information come to you - online version Advanced literature searching - booking form Search Strategies for Systematic Reviews in Medicine and Psychology - booking form Tools for note taking Finding grey literature Looking After Your Research Material: An Introduction to Research Data Management (RDM) and Data Management Plans (DMPs) - booking form Advanced Endnote - online tutorial [PDF] Advanced RefWorks - online tutorial Open Access: what you need to know Introduction to Prezi Finding images for research Copyright and your thesis Building interactive timel...

The Library offers several services to help you publish and disseminate your research. We can help you publish reports, journals and conference proceedings. We also support the publishing of digital collections. Research publications  The Library can help you to publish one-off reports in an open access format. See this example  from the  SAPPHIRE Group in Health Sciences .  If you want to start a new open access journal or conference proceedings, we have our own version of Open Journal Systems (OJS). This is journal management and publishing platform for academic  publications. Articles published through this system are free to any reader, and no APCs are charged to authors.  Please contact Library Research Services for more information: librarians@le.ac.uk Digital collections  Some researchers will be collecting materials as part of a project, and may want to publish them online. The Lib...

Finding University of Leicester Theses Browse the theses in your Department If you want to look at previous theses within your Department or subject then choose the 'Research Archive' search on the library homepage and search on 'your department theses' e.g. This will open the Leicester Research Archive - scroll down and you will see the Theses Collection for the Department: You can then browse the theses: If you would like to read or download a particular thesis - click on the link and scroll down to the PDF option: You will then be able to read or download the thesis unless it has an embargo in place, in which case the record will state there is an embargo: Search by keyword or author Go to the Leicester Research Archive homepage:  https://lra.le.ac.uk/ Use the search box in the top right hand corner: Finding UK Theses Try searching: EThOS - Electronic Theses Online System  which is available via the Brit...

  We have a large book collection at Leicester -  print and electronic. But we don't have everything. If you need titles that we don't have, there are three ways to get hold of books: * Don't forget to check the  Library catalogue  first * 1.     More Books     More Books  is our scheme where you can request books for the Library to buy. This can be books we don't have,  or books you think we need to have more copies of. The service is for in-print titles that are relevant for your research.  Click on  the link , login with your IT username and password, and then fill in as much of the form as you can. It is free to place a request.  We aim to respond to you within 24 hours. We can't guarantee to buy everything; but we take all suggestions seriously and use them to help plan the collections.  2.     Document Supply Sometimes it may be better to plac...

You have a reference for a journal article - how do you check whether we have access to it? Check Library Search Search for the article title in the library search on the library homepage   If the library has access to the article it should be one of the first search results:    Click on View It   Click on the link next to "Full text available at:" - this will take you to the full text of the article to read or download. I can't find it via Library Search - what next?  Check Google Scholar for an open access version Search for the article on Google Scholar. If there is an open access version available then a link or PDF link will be provided:   Don't forget that you can also link Google Scholar to library resources . It's not available via the library or Google Scholar - what next? Place a document supply request PGR/PhD students and staff are allowed 25 free document supply requests per year. The library will ...

One of the best ways to find out about new research in your field is to attend a regular research seminar. Speakers present new work before it is published, and allow the audience to ask questions and discuss their findings. Seminars are also a great way to meet new people from inside and outside the university.  There are many regular seminars at Leicester that PhD students can attend. You may already know about the one run by your department, but it is worth having a look at others, especially given the strong push for interdisciplinary research. Venturing outside your usual field can stimulate new ideas for your own research project.  Below is a list of active seminars for 2016/17. If anyone would like to be included in this list, email me (wjbf1@le.ac.uk) and I will update.   Archaeology Full program Time: Wednesdays, meet in School Foyer at 16:30.  Cardiovascular Sciences ...

Not sure what reference management or bibliographic software is? Watch our short introduction: At the University of Leicester we provide access and support for two software packages: EndNote RefWorks Both packages allow you to collect and store references, have a Word toolbar to insert citations and bibliographies and to store and annotate PDFs. Why might you prefer EndNote? It is very popular in certain subjects and you might find that your colleagues/supervisors are using it. If you wish to use the Law referencing style OSCOLA then you will need to use EndNote. If you are using a footnote style that requires short titles - EndNote can be customised better for this than RefWorks, and has a wider range of reference types. Be aware - the University license only covers the use of the EndNote desktop software on university owned computers. You can sync your desktop version with an online account to use at home, but the online account has less features than the desktop...

I had some feedback last week that searching PROSE is not the easiest way to find out what library training is on offer. We sympathise with you! An alternative is to look at the list of training on our Researchers page .  Or you can look at brand new guide to the  Postgraduate Researcher Workshop Programme   If you have any questions about the training please email Selina or myself: librarians@le.ac.uk

Our colleagues in IT Services offer software and training that may be of interested to researchers: Work off-campus - instructions on accessing email, files and installing Office on your own machine. Programs for home use - information on software you can install at home for free or at a discount, such as NVivo, SAS and SPSS Research computing facilities - for those that might need high performance computing, wikis or filedrop services Help & training - they run training courses on a variety of Office programs. We would highly recommend the Word - Long Document Essentials training to anyone writing a thesis. If you will need to use software packages to analysis statistics or data then we suggest you look at the Research Methods & Methodologies training available from our colleagues in Researcher Development. And don't forget that the library also runs lots of training for researchers too!

We are offering lots of training workshops fro PGRs during the Autumn term, including: Introduction to the library (for those who haven't attended a library induction): 12 October, 10am - 11:30am. Library Seminar Rooms. 1st floor.   20 October, 10am - 11:30am. Library Seminar Rooms. 1st floor.  Introduction to  Research Data Management Introduction to Reference Management Planning your literature search Conducting your literature search EndNote RefWorks Making research information come to you PubMed vs Medline  Finding grey literature Tools for note taking Who is citing who? Copyright & your thesis Advanced Endnote Advanced RefWorks   These can be booked via PROSE .  If you are unable to attend our face-to-face workshops then we also have online tutorials:   Literature Search Plan your literature search Conduct your literature search Discover how you can use Scopus, Web of Science...

A new academic year begins and its time to welcome new PhD students. We hope you enjoy your time here at Leicester.  The Library is here to help throughout your research. Our homepage and search can be found here . Please visit our Getting Started pages for all you need to know about using the Library.  There are two librarians who support research students: Selina Lock for  S cience, Technology and Medicine, and William Farrell for  Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities.  We are here to help you: find information for your research plan literature searches and systematic reviews  get to grips with our resources and databases use bibliographic software to organise your references use referencing styles when writing your thesis.  The Library also provides a dedicated study space for you: the Nicholas Corah Graduate Reading  Room...

Would you self-publish your monograph? The academic  Lesley Hulonce  has caused a stir this week by arguing for exactly that. Dissatisfied with the proposed sale price of her monograph from a traditional publisher (over £60) Hulonce decided to publish the book herself  through Amazon self- publishin g. Read more about her experience  here .  Other academics have  expressed dissatisfaction with publishers; price and the quality of e-books seem to be a particular bug-bears. These are both issues that librarians sympathise with.  Some authors and imprints have been experimenting with different kinds of publishing.  Zero Books (and its offspring  Repeater Books ) have pioneered a model of quicker, easier publishing that also encourages more imaginative writing. Martin Parker , a Professor here at Leicester, publish...

RefWorks allows you to manage all the references you have used in your assignments or research. New RefWorks Users   Create and organise a library of references that you can access via the web Store and annotate the PDFs of articles Import references from bibliographic databases and other information sources Cite while you write using add-in Word/Google Docs features Automatically create bibliographies If you have never used RefWorks then see our Getting Started Online Tutorial Existing RefWorks Users Why should you upgrade to new RefWorks? New RefWorks has lots of extra features: Store, view and annotate PDFs Tag your references Quick Cite function Save to RefWorks browser button Word 2016 citation toolbar (Add-In) Google Docs citation toolbar (Add-In) When should you upgrade to new RefWorks? New RefWorks and legacy RefWorks will both be available to use during the 2016/17 academic year to allow you to upgrade to new RefWorks at a time that suits ...

Last week we shared the most downloaded PhD Theses in the Leicester Research Archive (LRA), this time we highlight the most downloaded articles of 2015/16. These publications cover a wide range of research at Leicester from Law to Engineering, Geography to Museum Studies. Many of these articles are available thanks to Green Open Access  arrangements.  Top Ten Most Downloaded Articles in 2015/16 1.      Cunningham, Sally,  Recklessness: Being Reckless and Acting Recklessly   King's College Law Journal  (2010 )         http://hdl.handle.net/2381/10894 2.      Naismith, Laura et al.,    Mobile technologies and learning     Futurelab Literature Review Series, Report No 11    http://hdl.handle.net/2381/8132 3.      Hainsworth, Sarah V. & Uhure, N.J.,   Diamond like ...

Top Ten most downloaded theses from the Leicester Research Archive over the last year are: 1) Anxiety in high functioning children with autism (1999) by Alinda Gillott 2) From law to faith : letting go of secret trusts (1999) by Stephen James Alan Swann 3) The process and outcome of Transactional Analysis psychotherapy for the treatment of depression : an adjudicated case series (2013) by Mark Widdowson 4)  Financial Development, Economic Growth and Stock Market Volatility: Evidence from Nigeria and South Africa (2010) by Umar Bida Ndako 5)  The impact of Chinese culture on performance management practices in foreign firms operating in China (2014) by Anthony Wong Yuk Sun 6) The situation of street children in Zimbabwe: a violation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) (2009) by Markim Wakatama 7)  Developing an ESP curriculum for students of health sciences through needs analysis and course evaluation in Saudi Arabia (20...

I have been looking over the bog and video stats recently. It's always interesting to see what's popular, and it's no surprise that using EndNote dominates the top ten. Below I have reproduced the two most viewed posts: How to text-mine using EndNote, and how the EndNote plug-in for PowerPoint works.  For more help using EndNote there is lots more advice on our  web pages .  Searching the fulltext of PDFs in EndNote You can see how we used these techniques as part of a text mining project: Unlocking REF2014: Text mining to show your impact:  Watch the  recording . Did you know that you can search across the full text of PDF articles within EndNote desktop? First get the PDFs into EndNote: -  Import references from literature databases. -  Use the 'Find Full Text' feature. -  Set-up the 'OpenURL Link' Feature. Choose the references you wish to search and set the search fiel...