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This workshop session aims to address the following:

• What is critical reading?
• Reading productively
• Reading critically
• Effective note-taking techniques
• Pulling out the Big Ideas

The course will be a mixture of front-led instruction and interactive small group discussions.

These 30 minute small group sessions are an opportunity for you to obtain support for searching databases and using referencing software. General advice and support will be offered, and any specific queries will be addressed.

• 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!

Email reference@cam.ac.uk to arrange a session. Tell us what you need help with 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.

Don't suffer in silence - Book a buddy!

• Nervous or intimidated about visiting the UL for the first time?
• Don’t know where to begin with a Literature search?
• Want to discuss your Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan?

Book a buddy!

Email disability@cam.ac.uk to arrange a session. Tell us what you need help with 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.

• 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?
• What to learn what extra support the UL can offer?

Book a buddy!

Email disability@cam.ac.uk to arrange a session. Tell us what you need help with 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. You are welcome to attend by yourself or alongside the student that you assist.

The University Library holds over 9 million physical items and provides access to millions of online resources. In this session an experienced member of UL staff will show you the basics to get you started.

The tour will include:

• A brief introduction to iDiscover - your main tool for locating resources in the UL and other University of Cambridge Libraries
• A tour of the physical spaces including the Main Reading Room and Open bookstacks
• Demonstrations of how to locate the physical items you need and brief explanations of Electronic Legal Deposit and E-Resource access
• We'll show you where the important things are such as toilets, Tea Room, and comfortable areas to work
• We'll answer any questions you may have
• We'll make sure that by the end of the tour you will know where to go to find help

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.

If you already know the basics of Research Data Management (RDM) – for example backing up your work, file storage options - but now need to know more about effective strategies for sharing your data, then this course is for you!

This course gives a brief recap on RDM and then covers managing personal and sensitive data in the context of the new GDPR legislation, why it is a Good Thing to share your data, and how to do this most effectively in terms of describing your data, deciding where to share it, and using licences to control how your data is used by others. You will even get to write your own Data Management Plan (DMP): these help you manage your data throughout a project and after it has ended and are increasingly required as part of a grant or fellowship application. You will also learn about the range of support services available to you within the University for managing your data.

If you are completely new to the concept of research data management then the beginners course is for you.

What would happen to your research data if your lab exploded, or your laptop was stolen, or your cloud storage account was hacked? How could you prevent data loss in these situations? Managing your data effectively is vital to help you do this.

This workshop will introduce the basic principles of Research Data Management (RDM) and how they are relevant throughout the research life cycle.

Intended for those who are new to RDM, this course will firstly explain what RDM is, and then go on to cover basic data back-up and storage options, file sharing tools, and strategies for organising your data, as well as providing guidance on managing personal or sensitive data. You will also learn about the range of support services available to you within the University for managing your data.

If you already have a basic understanding of RDM then the advanced course is probably more appropriate for you to attend.

Scopus is a citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature that can be used by researchers to determine the impact of specific authors, articles/documents, and journals. It contains over 76 million records in the areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In Scopus, it is possible to perform quick searches by document, author, or affiliation. You will learn how to perform basic searches, analyse the results, check affiliation and researcher profiles and consult journal metrics for the over 23,000 titles currently in Scopus.

This session will be delivered by Dr Charles Martinez, Senior Customer Consultant, Elsevier.

Please bring your own device so you are able to follow along with the session examples.

This session will help prepare you to begin your literature review. You will learn strategies for searching for relevant material, how to troubleshoot common search problems, and how to stay up to date with new publications in your field.

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

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.

This session aims to address the following:

• How to define and refine your research question
• Building up your search skills
• Learning what databases to use and when
• Getting Google to work for you
• Evaluating your sources
• Referencing what you find

This session explores why you should share your all research as widely as possible and how you can go about doing so. It will demonstrate the potential that Open Research can have in maximising exposure for your work and how you can track and trace how your research is being shared online.

Please bring your own internet-enabled device to this session.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

This session will cover the things you need to consider in order to reach your audience effectively through publication. It will introduce how you should decide which academic journal is most appropriate for your research, including considerations such as journal rankings, publication times, fees and your own publication history. It will also cover the benefits and practicalities of using pre-print servers and registered reports.

Please bring your own internet-enabled device to this session.