DWLresearch

Happy Holidays from OA Owl We hope all our PGRs and researchers have a good Xmas break. Try to squeeze some rest and relaxation in between the research duties! Most of Library Research Services are finishing early for Xmas, but Selina will be available until 12noon on Thursday 21st December, so email librarians@le.ac.uk if you need any urgent help before the holidays. Library Opening Over Xmas You can find the full library opening hours here . But remember... There are no staffed services between Friday 22nd December to Monday 1st January, but the library building is open on most days. The library building is closed on Monday 25th Dec, Tuesday 26th December and Monday 1st January. We will be back from Tuesday January 2nd.

The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (ODNB) recently unveiled a new look and new features. ODNB is one of the best resources for anyone interested in the history and culture of Britain and its former Empire. Here are a few changes worth knowing.  Login If you have logged in via the Library you do not need to login for a second time. The 'Sign In' options on the left-hand side are for creating a personal account with the ODNB; it doesn't unlock the content for you. (It could be a good idea to create an account however, as it will allow you to save searches and annotations.)  ODNB already knows I am from Leicester. There are more ways to browse the content.  You can now browse biographies by Occupation and Religious Affiliation. For example, browsing by Occupation > Law and crime > Crimes of deception reveals 90 biographies of forgers, fraudsters and swindlers. This includes the intriguing entry for "Carter, Henry  [Harry]  ( 1749 1829 ...

You can now export multiple citations from Google Scholar if you have a Google Account. Go to Google Scholar and sign into your Google Account. Conduct your search. Click on the Star icon (Save) under each reference you want to export. Then click on My Library in the top, right of the screen. Select all the references and click on the Export option: Click the Star/Save Icon Choose Export Option To Export into EndNote Choose the EndNote option. Open the EndNote file that is created. The references should automatically import into EndNote. To Export into RefWorks Choose the RefMan option. Save the RIS file that is created. Login to your RefWorks account. Click on the plus (+) button. Choose Import References. Add the RIS file you just saved. Set the file import option to RIS - Reference Manager. Click import and your references will be imported. --- Good Practice Tip: Always check that all the reference information you need has been...

Open access at Leicester International OA week  The wrap up of the International Open Access Week 2017 is a perfect occasion to give you an update on Open Access (OA) related activities at University of Leicester accompanied with fun statistics (as fun as statistics can be!). During the Open Access week the University Open Access and Research Data Team ran a series of pop-up stalls at various locations across the main campus as well as in hospital sites (RKCSB & Glenfield), offering advice on raising the discoverability of research profiles. Also as part of the celebrations we have launched a completely redesigned OA website. Visit www.le.ac.uk/openaccess to explore the essential guidance how to make your research outputs OA. Fig.1. Main page of new, redesigned Open Access website ( www.le.ac.uk/openaccess ) The outreach campaign was in addition to routine talks and tailored training sessions that the team provides for departments across the University every y...

Just over a year ago at the University of Leicester Library, we were looking at the download stats for our online PhD theses and noticed that a study of the village of Wrangle in the early modern period was the most downloaded item that month. This got us thinking. Of all the open access theses and research publications in our online archive what is actually popular with users? Medicine and health related items do well, presumably from people searching for information on illnesses and conditions. The other studies that consistently attract downloads are those about a particular place. Broadly speaking these are from geography, archaeology and history. Open access policy has been driven by the sciences and has tended to assume that freely available publications are an unproblematic ‘good thing’. It has paid less attention to what is popular, with whom and why. Inspired by the example of Wrangle, we decided to explore creating a new resource to promote the open access local...

The Doctoral College Reading Room, at the front of the first floor of the library, is now designed for use by PGR students and staff only. The space includes a separate Silent Study area with desks and computers, a quiet area with desks and informal seating, and a bookable group study room. We would encourage PGR students and staff to make full use of this space. Masters students now have a separate Graduate Reading Room elsewhere on the first floor. As part of the new arrangements there is now a Consultation Room, which we are also using for upcoming events, including Shut Up & Write! and Research Data Drop-in Clinics. ***** *****

Make a date with your writing and join us for distraction-free writing sessions in person or online. Working on a thesis, journal article or book chapter? Need some distraction-free writing time? Library Research Services are running Shut Up & Write! sessions for researchers in November and December 2017. Tuesday 7th November and Tuesday 5th December - 10am-12noon. Consultation Room, Doctoral College Reading Room, 1st Floor, David Wilson Library Session outline: 10am: Arrival & Prep 10.15am: Write 11am: Break & Refreshments 11.15am: Write 12noon: End There is no need to book, just bring your laptop, pad & pen, or preferred writing tools!  You can also use the computers in the Doctoral College Reading Room or borrow a library laptop . If you can’t join us in person then  join us online  via Twitter - follow  @DWLResearch and use the hastag #suwleic These two sessions also coincide with the UK Shut U...

Benchmarking RDM Training The University of Leicester research data service is  involved in an international collaborative project which aims to assess and benchmark the quality of RDM training across institutions.This blog post reports on the progress of the international project so far, it originally appeared on the project blog   on 6th October 2017.    Remember, you can sign up for one of our generic or discipline-specific 2017/2018 introduction to RDM training sessions here . We look forward to seeing you. How effective is your RDM training? Collaborators  (in alphabetical order by surname): Cadwallader Lauren, Higman Rosie, Lawler Heather, Neish Peter, Peters Wayne, Schwamm Hardy, Teperek Marta, Verbakel Ellen, Williamson, Laurian, Busse-Wicher Marta When developing new training programmes, one often asks oneself a question about the quality of training. Is it good? How good is it? Trainers often develop feedback questionnaires and ask p...

Doctoral College Reading Room 1st floor, David Wilson Library As usual the Library is providing a raft of training and workshops during Autumn term, as part of the Researcher Development program: Planning your literature search Conducting your literature search Introduction to EndNote Introduction to RefWorks Advanced literature searching Visualising your data Search strategies for systematic reviews Tools for note taking Finding grey literature Planning lit search (online) Conducting lit search (online) Research Data Management Copyright and your thesis Advanced Endnote Click on the link to book your place. Those without links can be booked via  PROSE . If you cannot make a training session you are interested in then book a 1to1 appointment (in person or online) by emailing librarians@le.ac.uk   We also have online training resources for literature searching , EndNote and RefWorks . New PhD Students: Introduction to the Library, referenc...

Just in time for the start of term, Google Scholar has changed its design and layout. Further details are here .  There is nothing substantially new, but the settings and the advanced search have moved to the ‘drawer icon’ in the top left.  Find the advanced search and settings in the top left corner  Google Scholar provides a simple way to  search for scholarly literature - particularly journal articles. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions (USA only), from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. It is also good at taking you straight to a pdf copy, where it can. If you are off-campus, we recommend that you change the settings so that Scholar knows you are from the University of Leicester. Go to Settings, then click on Library links. Type  " University of Leicester" and clic...

The new academic year starts next week. We would like to welcome all new PhD students to Leicester, and all returning ones too. We hope you enjoy your time here.  David Wilson Library Reading Rooms There will be two events introducing the Library and its services for new research students (details below.) We look forward to meeting many of you then, or at other events this term. If you have any questions, please email: librarians@le.ac.uk  PhD Students: Introduction to the Library, reference management, and research data Are you new to the University of Leicester library? If you would like to find out more about the Library and the dedicated support we can provide for researchers, come along to these 30 minute sessions. When Oct 16, 2017 Introduction to the Library -  10:00 AM to 10:30 AM Introduction to reference management  -  10:30 AM  to  11:00 AM Introduction to research data -  11...

EndNote X8 is being made available on staff and student computers for the 2017/18 academic year. For staff computers it will be made available to install through the Program Installer. For student computers it will automatically be made available via the Start - All Programs menu. Remember - the University of Leicester license only allows EndNote X8 to be installed on University owned computers (including University laptops). If you would like to access your references at home then you can sync your EndNote desktop library with EndNote online. What's new in EndNote X8? If you're an existing EndNote user then check out the 5min video on what's new: New to using EndNote? Then check out the 5min video on EndNote's main features You can also find lots more training videos on specific features on the EndNote YouTube Channel .

Relevant data for research can turn up in some unexpected places. For example, we subscribe to a number of financial databases such as SNL , EIKON and Bloomberg . Their main purpose is to provide financial data on companies, stocks and markets. But to aid the industry analysts who use them, the databases also provide wider macroeconomic and demographic data. They even have information on infrastructure and geography.  SNL, to focus on one, is strong on US statistics and  contains t he populations, age structure,  household size and incomes, and unemployment rates of US states. This information can also be mapped, along with: World airports, cities, ports, railroads, roads and utilities Real estate mortgage information across US counties  Numbers of businesses by  NAICS classification.  Maps created can be exported, like this one of the population density of Houston: ...

During the next year we'll be starting to offer more training and advice on traditional publication metrics and atlmetrics. In the meantime there is already a wealth of altmetric data available to University of Leicester staff and researchers. Almetrics refers to the the alternative ways your research is being referred to. For example, has it been tweeted, blogged, cited in Wikipedia, picked up by news outlets or mentioned on FaceBook? There are various companies and platforms that are offering data or ways of collating this data. This post will focus on two: PlumX and Altmetric . Please be aware: Altmetrics is still a new and emerging field and not all research outputs will have altmetrics data. Altmetrics in Literature Databases You will see the PlumX Metrics icon appearing when you search some of our databases e.g. Scopus and EbscoHost. For example, this Richard III paper by Turi King et al . - you can see the PlumX Metrics option on the right of the page: ...

A few weeks ago the Open Library of the Humanities (OLH) released an open source, test version of Janeway , the software they have developed for publishing journals. At Leicester, we use a version of Open Journal System (OJS) to publish several journals associated with academic departments.  OJS is widely used by libraries who support journal publishing. In the UK, Aberdeen, Kent and UCL all use it. It fair to say that many users have a love/hate relationship with it. Editors and reviewers, in particular, find the 'back end' difficult to use. The release of Janeway, therefore, sparked our interest. From a readers' point of view, OLH journals have always looked attractive and felt easy to navigate. More than that, the release felt like another step towards a more coordinated open access publishing infrastructure. A clearer division of labour emerging where OLH concentrate on 'flipping' subscription journals to OA, and individual libraries concentrate...

If you are a researcher in the biological sciences, chemistry, digital humanities and sociology the UK Data Service and Jisc would like to invite you to participate in one of several focus groups exploring the use of FAIR data principles within UK academic research. Two free to attend workshops will be held in September, one in London and the other in Newcastle . What is meant by the FAIR Data Principles? FAIR refers to a set of guiding principles developed by a group of international stakeholders which proposes that scholarly outputs should be: Findable : easy to find for both humans and computers, with metadata that facilitate searching for specific datasets Accessible : stored for long term so that they can easily be accessed and/or downloaded with well-defined license and access conditions (open access when possible), whether at the level of metadata, or at the level of the actual data Interoperable : ready to be combined with other datasets by humans or computers Reu...