Medical Library Research Skills Training Programme 2018-2019

A course specifically for University of Cambridge staff and students. Attendees will learn how to search medical/healthcare databases accessed with a Raven login (such as Medline and Embase) effectively and efficiently, to learn how to save searches and references, and to create and maintain a bibliography. This course is delivered at an introductory/refresher level, and assumes you have had no prior training in how to search databases.

All attendees are required to have a Raven login. NHS staff wanting to learn similar material should book onto our 'Getting the Best Results - Improving Your Database Searching' course instead.

A course specifically for NHS staff. Attendees will learn how to search databases accessed with an Athens login (such as Medline, Embase and Cinahl) effectively and efficiently, to learn how to save searches and references, and to create and maintain a bibliography.

All attendees are required to have an NHS Athens login. University of Cambridge staff and students wanting to learn similar material should book onto the Introduction to Literature Searching (for University) course instead.

One session - four medicine and life science databases - widest coverage for your literature search. PubMed is great, but it doesn't cover all the journals relevant to life sciences and medicine. Embase, Web of Science and Scopus can also be relevant and each covers unique material. Come to this hands-on session to learn how to get the best from each of these "4 tops".

This session is aimed at University of Cambridge staff or students who have already had prior training in database searching. Those who want to attend an introductory session should book onto the Introduction to Literature Searching course, or the Getting the Best Results - Improving Your Database Searching if they are NHS staff.

A course to take you through conference poster design, with tips and resources to help with the content and presentation in order to ensure you communicate your research effectively. The course will cover where to source good quality, free graphics, how to include references in your poster, and advice about how best to present it at a conference. The session will NOT involve hands-on creation of a poster.

A course designed to take you step-by-step through academic writing and publication, with tips and resources to make writing up as simple as possible. The course will demystify the peer-review process, and help you to improve the precision and clarity of your academic writing.

Before undertaking any piece of primary research it’s important to be aware of as much of the existing literature as possible. A systematic literature review can also be a research end in itself. And it’s not something to be taken lightly. But how can you be sure you’re being as rigorous as necessary? How can you manage the references you find, document the process, and also know when to stop searching?

This session assumes attendees have already had prior introductory training in literature searching. It is a prerequisite that you have attended either Introduction to Literature Searching (if you are a University of Cambridge staff member or student) or Getting the Best Results - Improving Your Database Searching (if you are an NHS staff member). Exceptions will be made if you received similar training from another department or university - please contact us if you have any questions about prerequisites.