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This workshop session aims to address the following:

• What is critical reading?
• Reading productively
• Reading critically
• Effective note-taking techniques

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.

Introduction to Bibliographic Searching in Theology and Religious Studies will give a brief overview of the issues of searching for publications in general, and follow this up with searching the specialist Theology and Religious studies bibliographic database ATLA and Index Theologicus.

• 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!

This session is designed for anyone who would like to learn more about how to read academic literature. This hour long workshop explores reading techniques, article structures and productive reading, while also providing techniques you can use to tackle your weekly readings.

Learning critical reading skills is a useful way to make better notes from what you have read and can help you to organise and plan what you read. This session will help you to put these skills to good use and become more confident at reading academic literature.

• 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?
• Want 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

This tour of the Divinity Faculty Library is primarily aimed at members of the University who are not Divinity Faculty members, but any member of the Divinity Faculty is welcome too. Each tour will be led by a member of the Divinity Faculty Library team.

We start with an orientation session at the Divinity Faculty (ca. 45 minutes), followed by a tour of the University Library (ca. 30 minutes) for Divinity Faculty members, led by members of the Divinity Faculty Library staff.

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.

A session with Louisa Vickers-Mills (ProQuest) looking at the new interface for the Early English Books Online (EEBO) database. EEBO contains around 17 million pages digitised from nearly 150,000 works printed in the British Isles and North America, as well as elsewhere in the world in the English language, up to 1700. It covers all subject areas, with particularly good representation for literature, theology, history, politics and the arts.

This session will explain how to use EEBO for your research and which features can help you get the best from the content.

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.

Finding secondary literature to inform and support your research is paramount to any higher-level research. This session focuses on the concepts as well as practical issues, to give participants a more comprehensive understanding of the issues and features of literature searching.

Please bring your own wifi-connected device, so that you can look at some of the platforms.

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.

An introduction to the use of the specialist Theology and Religious studies bibliographic database ATLA for undergraduates, providing information on how to make the most effective use of this resource; of particular relevance to those preparing or working on a dissertation and wanting to acquire wider bibliographic information on a specific topic.

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

From fair dealing to sharing your research online it seems that nothing with copyright is ever simple. There are few black and white rules about copyright but there can be serious consequences for getting things wrong! This session will cover the basics of UK copyright law and how these impact researchers such as dealing with third party materials, seeking permissions and how to manage risk.

Creative Commons licenses sit alongside existing copyright regulations as a way to help researchers use existing creations and share their own work with others. This session will explore the history of the Creative Commons movement, explore how the licenses can be put together and how researchers can use them to their best advantage.

Many funders now require evidence of how researchers will manage the data they use and collect before funding is even released. Although this can seem like yet another piece of unnecessary paperwork, data management plans can actually make the research process much more efficient. This interactive session will encourage participants to think about the different elements of a plan and give them a chance to review existing plans to gather ideas they can use in their own work.

This session will look at the 'problem' of so-called predatory publishers. These firms regularly approach researchers via email to solicit manuscripts and conference papers and with the increased emphasis on publishing as a measure of success it can be easy to give into temptation. This session will look at whether these publishers are a problem, how to spot a potential predatory publisher or conference and the best action to take if you are approached.