All Librarians in Training courses

This course is a short introduction to cataloguing in the Alma metadata editor. It’s suitable for beginners who have some knowledge of MARC or experience of editing holdings and items. We will look at creating records from templates, downloading records from external databases, editing information in catalogue records and practise cataloguing some novels.

This course is an introduction to the core fields in MARC21, the format we use for catalogue records in Alma. It’s suitable for beginners and also for those who have done some cataloguing but want a more formal training session in MARC. We will look at MARC coding for author, title, publication information and physical description, and highlight the important elements to check in control fields.

A two-hour session designed to introduce you to the skill of compiling back-of-the-book type indexes. Indexing is a useful skill for anyone working in a library or information environment and also provides opportunities for self-employment and working from home. We will touch on the basic processes, standards and conventions, the Society of Indexers’ course, and embedded indexing, and we will have a go at creating a basic index. Feel free to bring a laptop but they are not essential.

Making LibGuides which are usable, accessible and look great is not always an easy task, but it definitely can be done! This introductory training will cover everything from the basics – how to add text and images, edit and rearrange content – to presenting content in an effective, usable and attractive way. We’ll also discuss how you can ensure that your LibGuides meet accessibility standards.

This course is particularly aimed at people who are new to LibGuides editing or any current editors who feel that they would benefit from a refresher. If you don’t have a LibGuides account, or access to a LibGuide to work on during the session, please contact the course leader (hem37) in advance so that an account and a training guide can be arranged for you.

Do you see these subject headings in the catalogue records and wonder how they work? Do you add these subject headings yourself but sometimes wonder if you’re doing so correctly? Are you studying librarianship and would like to add some subject heading skills to your portfolio? This is an introduction to the workings of LC subject headings, an opportunity to ask all the questions you want, and get some practical experience of adding headings to catalogue records.

This course aims to provide instruction and practice in the creation of bibliographic records for rare books from the hand-press era so that attendees will be equipped with the basic skills to catalogue their library’s early printed books to national standards. Focus will primarily be on 17th-18th Century books printed in England and/or in English.

Basic knowledge and familiarity with MARC21 and AACR2 is essential. Laptop optional (paper templates provided for exercises)

Referencing software is a great way for students to make the referencing process easier. But how much do you know about the different tools that are available?

In this session, several demonstrations of popular referencing tools will be given in order to increase your knowledge and understanding of how they work, and help you troubleshoot if students come to you with queries. The demos will include Zotero, Mendeley and BiBTEX. Please bring a laptop or other personal device if you wish to follow along.

A forum for Library Assistants and assistant staff across Cambridge University libraries with a series of talks and discussions around what the role means and how we can diversify and make the most of it in different library contexts.

This course will look at how to create metadata for online catalogues and digital libraries, concentrating on special collections material. We will be using TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) as the most suitable metadata standard for the description and presentation of manuscripts and rare books in a digital environment. The course will focus on the descriptive element of TEI, but will also touch on the possibilities for transcription, translation, and the presentation of digital images. There will be a taught element (1 hour) followed by the opportunity to have a go at creating a description in TEI yourself.

Moodle is being used for all kinds of things at Cambridge, but do you know really what it can do?

From adding content to marking student papers, we will run through the activities and resources that can be used to support teaching in Moodle. The idea being to familiarise library staff with the possibilities and provide some areas of where we can support teaching staff on how to make Moodle work for their teaching practices.

Please come with questions and if there are any particular areas you would like to make sure we cover drop us an email (elj26@cam.ac.uk) as soon as you can and we will do our best to include it.