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• Nervous or intimidated about visiting the UL for the first time?
• Don’t know where to begin with a Literature search?
• Can never find the books you need on the open shelves?

Book a buddy!

Book this 20 minute slot and we’ll match you with a member of library staff who can show you what you need to know, whether it’s searching the catalogue, using Electronic Legal Deposit, finding open shelf books or something else entirely.

Sign up today! We’ll contact you to find out exactly what you need to know and then we’ll arrange your perfect match with an experienced member of the Reader Services team!

This a trial service running throughout the summer vacation. We will appreciate any feedback that you provide.

You own your own research right? Well it depends. In this session we will explore the sometimes very complicated world of copyright and what can happen when you publish your work. We'll also introduce you to concepts such as third party copyright, and how you can use existing licencing tools to maximise the reach of your research as well as using other peoples work to advance your own, but legally.

The Graduate Self-Assessment tool is intended for those in the Humanities & Social Sciences and Arts & Humanities schools. It is the first step in an online module designed to help you to assess your own skill-set, identify target areas for improvement and make decisions about what to do next. The tool is recommended for all first year postgraduates, but will be available for you to return to check on your progress.

Once you have completed the self-assessment exercise a number of options for developing your skills will become available to you, ranging from reading articles to signing up for relevant face-to-face workshops.

We encourage students to take the survey about once a year, but it is particularly useful for those who are just starting their PhD and for those who are just entering the final year of their PhD.

You will need to click here to gain access to the self-assessment tool.

This session will develop skills that will help you get the most out of your literature review. From a foundation of effective search strategies, you will learn how to critically appraise academic literature, techniques for getting through sources quickly and evaluating their relevance, engaging with key material and beginning to write your literature review itself, as well as ensuring accuracy in your citations and references.

Please bring a laptop, tablet or other web-enabled device with you to the session.

A thirty minute introduction to the UL, aimed at those using our facilities and collections over the summer vacation period. An experienced member of staff will meet you in the Entrance Hall then lead you on a twenty minute tour of the UL,taking in the Locker Room, Open Bookstacks, Reading Room and West Room. Ten minutes are reserved after the tour for a question and answer session.

This session demonstrates the importance of a good online presence for participants from exploring what comes up through a quick Google search all the way through to maintaining profiles on academic networking sites. The legalities of using such sites in the context of publisher and open access copyright compliance is also discussed

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.

This course will help you understand how to critically appraise a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). Using the CASP Checklist, the course covers samples and sample size, randomisation, bias, statistics, significance (P Values and Confidence Intervals) and relevance.

We ask that you read a paper that will be provided before you attend the session, in order for us to make the best use of the time together.

This course will help you understand how to critically appraise a systematic review, assessing its reliability, trustworthiness, and applicability.

We ask that you read a paper that will be provided before you attend the session, in order for us to make the best use of the time together.

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.

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.

How to take the bile out of your bibliography, and ensure that it's not the most time-consuming part of your work. A variety of tools will be showcased: EndNote, EndNoteWeb, Zotero, Mendeley.

Being a reflective practitioner is an important skill to have, but it doesn't always come naturally. It's an essential requirement for people in a variety of professions, particularly healthcare, where it plays an important role in decision making and patient care. For nurses undertaking revalidation, reflective writing is a key component of the process, but reflective writing is likely to be of relevance to those in other professions as well.

This interactive workshop will help you to understand the theory of reflective practice and how to translate this into your everyday role. It will provide tips for overcoming barriers to carrying out reflection and how to deal with feedback as well as offering a brief introduction to reflective writing.

There is an increasing emphasis in research on the management and sharing of data. Many funding bodies that support research undertaken at Cambridge require not only open access to any publications based on that research, but also to the data underlying it. This course will help you understand funders’ requirements for management and sharing of research data, and will provide opportunities to create your own data management plan and test out resources that will make the data management process easier.

Your SSC will require that you find scientific literature in order to read around a topic, even if you're are not doing a systematic review as the eventual outcome. It is a great opportunity to gain Key Skills which will be valuable for your SSC, your Year 5 Paeds CAT, and the rest of your professional life.

This session will teach you how to search medical/healthcare databases effectively and efficiently, save and record literature search terms, and keep track of the results that you find.

Your SSC will require that you find scientific literature in order to read around a topic, even if you're are not doing a systematic review as the eventual outcome. It is a great opportunity to gain Key Skills which will be valuable for the SSC, your Year 5 Paeds CAT, and the rest of your professional life.

This session will be a refresher in how to search medical/healthcare databases effectively and efficiently, save and record literature search terms, and keep track of the results that you find.

This is a course designed for students undertaking a systematic review for their SSC project. It will cover all aspects of the systematic review process: ensuring your database search is as comprehensive as possible (and knowing when to stop), how to manage the process and results of the systematic review, and how to save references and cite them effectively.

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.

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 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.

Take a break from revision stress with a twenty minute guided tour of the famous UL Tower. An experienced member of staff will take you up one of Cambridge's tallest structures where you can experience dazzling views of Cambridge as well as seeing some of the unique material that the tower holds.

Please be aware that access to the Tower is by lift/elevator only.

Cambridge University Library is one of the top research libraries in the world and holds over 8 million items. If you are a member of Library staff at a college, department or faculty library and would like to give your students introductory tours of the UL, then we would love to help you gain the knowledge and confidence to do that.

Email us today (research-skills@lib.cam.ac.uk) to get started. We can give advice via email or by telephone (including sharing our tour notes and guidance) or we can organise a one-to-one tour for you with an experienced member of UL staff. We will guide you through the orientation tour route that we use for our own tours and can answer any questions that you may have.

This session will cover the basic principles of the microblogging platform Twitter. Participants will have the opportunity to get to grips with using Twitter and understanding the platform’s unique community and language through hands-on activities. Aspects of science communication will be touched upon as well as examples of best practice, using Twitter personally and professionally, before concluding with some top tips on getting the most out of this communication tool.

This session introduces participants to the importance of good referencing practices within their work. The University of Cambridge’s position on plagiarism will be presented before moving on to a discussion around good referencing techniques, using the Harvard referencing style as an example. Participants will see a live demonstration of the reference management tool Zotero before taking part in a quiz to consolidate their knowledge.