Tag: Cross Cultural Communication

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Brush up on your search skills

A pot of paint brushes

Searching should be easy, right? We do it all the time in our day to day lives and with Google so ingrained into our existence, we don’t give it much thought. We type some words into the search engine and most of the time we find what we are looking for. Nothing to it!

However, while this approach certainly works for checking out cinema times or booking flights, it lets us down where research is concerned. We have high expectations that information will be quick and easy to come by and that it will be neatly organised in one place, rather than having to search in multiple locations, using different techniques. We imagine that the time consuming part of our research will be the analysing, synthesizing and the writing of it and we often don’t even think about the searching side of things.

The reality though is quite different. Without investing in our searching techniques and the development of a search plan, we can often find ourselves overwhelmed by information and not being able to see the wood from the trees. Our stress levels rise and our frustrations explode. Surely finding information shouldn’t be this hard!

The good news is, is that there is help to be had. Our job as Liaison Librarians is to equip you with the skills you need to create that all-important search plan and to encourage you to pause and stop before you dive straight into finding information for your research. We have a fantastic range of online tools for you to do this, not least an interactive search planner that you can keep adding to throughout your search and which you can even email to yourself, your supervisor, or us as a Liaison team for feedback. The Academic Skills Kit has lots of advice on how to start a search, including how to break your concept down into manageable chunks and how to identify keywords and synonyms.

You can also check out this short video to get you started…….

Keep your eyes peeled for our next blog installment of how to find particular resources. See you then!

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

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Everyday life and Mass Observation

Vintage documents

Mass Observation. Wow, sounds intriguing, doesn’t it? It should!

This resource offers revolutionary access to one of the most important archives for the study of Social History in the modern era. You can log in using your Newcastle University Campus ID and password to explore original manuscript and typescript papers created and collected by the Mass Observation organisation, as well as printed publications, diaries, photographs and interactive features dating from 1937 to 1972.

If you’re interested in learning more about the topics currently influencing our lives, it would do no harm to research the social history topics available within Mass Observation such as anti-Semitism, the economy, austerity, education, women at work, religion, mining, news, the Government, smoking, drinking, sexual behaviour, propaganda, unemployment and writing (to name just a few!).

Mass Observation home page

Mass Observation Diarist maps

If you want to know more about Mass Observation and to see some samples from the collection, then you could take a look at the Mass Observation Twitter feed, or there is a recorded webinar available for you to watch via YouTube in order to get the best out of the resource.

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Future proofing your employability

“What would you guess is the most common job?” Michael Lai, Outreach Lead at KGI, asked an audience of students at his Columbia Heights TEDTalk back in 2016. His audience members offer a few suggestions. “Engineer?” “Fast food workers?”  After several failed attempts, Michael puts them out of their misery,

“3.5 billion truck drivers in the United’s States” he tells them. “Experts predict that in the next 12-15 years, most of the cars on America’s highways will be self-driving… so what’s going to happen to the most common job?”

The future of the job market – and it’s inherent uncertainty – has been receiving a lot of attention in the international press in recent years, with Universities UK analysis predicting “65% of children entering primary schools today will work in jobs and functions that don’t currently exist.”  In previous generations, new graduates could expect to work with the same company for several years, steadily climbing the corporate ladder in a predictable, but reassuring linear way. In the 21st century however, the face of the job market is changing, and once you graduate, you may find yourself looking at a “portfolio career” over traditional career progression – something Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg described as more akin to a career “jungle gym” than a career ladder.

But what does all this talk of truck-driving and emergent markets mean for you, the UK Graduate? Well, if the gig economy becomes the norm in the next 10 years, one of the key challenges for new graduates will be the perpetual need to upskill yourself, and market your own skill base to different employers. This puts the spotlight on what have traditionally been referred to as “soft” transferable skills that are required across many different roles and sectors – skills such as resilience, team-working and critical thinking. Here at the Library, we’d argue that information and digital literacy falls under this bracket (well of course we would, we’re librarians!). The ability to find and use information and make considered use of digital tools is an important capability in any graduate job. Don’t just take our word for it – we spoke to several students returning from placement who told us their information skills had helped them get ahead.

The good news though is that your degree programme offers you the chance to work on and demonstrate all of these skills. Employers will know that you may not have extensive work experience as a new graduate, but make sure you cherry-pick prime examples from your University work, part –time jobs and any voluntary experience to exemplify the skills employers are looking for (and remember, the Careers service can help you with interview preparation.) Make the most of the workshops and sessions open to during your time at University so you are in a great position to articulate these important skills. For more information on how the Library can help, check out our Employability Guide

References

  1. TEDx Talks (2016) Four Key Skills to Lead the Future. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djHTcES2ATg
  2. Universities UK (2018) Solving future skills challenges. 6th August 2018. Available at: https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/policy-and-analysis/reports/Documents/2018/solving-future-skills-challenges.pdf
  3. Sandberg, S as quoted by Lebowitz, S and Campbell, D (2019) “Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon shares his number one piece of advice for millennials who want to get ahead in their careers.” Business insider, Jan 13th 2019. Available at:  https://www.businessinsider.com/career-advice-millennials-goldman-sachs-ceo-david-solomon-2019-1?r=US&IR=T
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Shades of Grey [Literature]

Grey literature. Black Literature.

Did you even know they existed? Possibly not.

Depending upon your source, “black literature” can be defined as books and peer-reviewed published journals. This is the familiar material you will source and use through your University Library and its catalogue.

Grey literature is something else entirely. Grey literature is research or material that is not produced by commercial publishers. It may be wholly unpublished or published in a non-commercial form. Think along the lines of industry-related materials, academic publications, government publications and think tank papers.

GreyNet, the Grey Literature Network Service has more detailed information on this vital research resource.

Grey Literature can be unique and an important source of information. There is a range of grey literature you may need to consult to ensure your research is complete. Examples of these materials include:

  • Working papers
  • Conference proceedings
  • Theses and dissertations
  • Government and official publications, including Green and White Papers, Select Committee papers, legislation
  • Policy statements
  • Research reports
  • Newsletters
  • Fact sheets
  • Blogs
  • Transcripts
  • Pre-prints and post-prints of articles
  • Technical reports
  • Professional guidelines
  • Patents
  • Standards
  • Market research
  • Data, e.g. Census, economic data, statistics

Most databases, available via your Subject Guide, will allow you to limit your search by document type, including grey literature, which does improve accessibility to this type of material.

Other resources include:

  • Bielefeld Academic Search Engine

    Operated by Bielefeld University Library this search engine indexes open access academic literature. The Advanced Search option allows you to search for specific types of grey literature.
  • Box of Broadcasts

    Box of Broadcasts provides access to over two million programmes from over 65 TV and radio channels, including most of the UK’s freeview network, all BBC TV and radio content from 2007, and several foreign language channels. You can view archived programmes, record new ones, create clips and playlists and see transcripts. (This resource is not available outside the UK.)
  • Digital Education Resource Archive (DERA)

    The Institute of Education Digital Education (University of London) Resource Archive (DERA) is a digital archive of all documents published electronically by government and related bodies in the area of education.
  • Open Grey

    The System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe provides open access to over 700,000 bibliographical references.
  • Teachers TV from Education in Video

    Provides access to all 3,530 globally-acclaimed instructional videos produced in 2008 by the United Kingdom’s Department of Education to train and develop teachers’ skills through demonstrations and commentary by teachers, administrators, and other educational experts.
  • Newcastle University Theses and Dissertations Guide

    Newcastle University theses are available in the eTheses Repository. Other UK theses may be available via EThOS. There is not one single source for locating non-UK theses. The Guide will give you some starting points.
  • UK Legislation

    UK Legislation is freely available online but be aware there may be delays of up to 2 weeks before any updates appear. Use your subscribed databases available via the Law Subject Guide.

The list can go on…

Once you have located your grey literature, do question it using the CRAAP test – currency, relevance, authority, accuracy, purpose. Consider what is publicly available versus a subscribed (or paid for) resource. It may be biased and you should include that assessment in your work.

And finally, don’t forget, not everything is available online!

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Love reading? Browse through BrowZine…

Not sure which journal article you’re looking for? Do it the ‘old school’ way and browse through your favourite journals using BrowZine without having to trek to the library or newsagents to flick through the magazines.

BrowZine is a publisher-neutral reading and discovery platform for eJournals. You can browse complete issues, set up a personal bookshelf of your favourite titles and receive notifications when new issues are released.

Library Search and browsing eJournals via BrowZine

You can do this on your PC via Library Search or perhaps you prefer using your smartphone? Access BrowZine via the University App or download the BrowZine App from the Apple Store or Play Store.

Access BrowZine via the Newcastle University App

Set up your personal account using your University email address and BrowZine will always recognise you as a member of Newcastle University and give you access to the full-text articles it contains.

BrowZine Subject Areas

BrowZine Arts and Humanities

Get browsing!

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Where could maps take you?

Sniffer dog in high vis detecting a gas leak

So when does an Animal Science student need to use EDINA Digimap and GIS software?  The answer is not all do, but you never know where your dissertation project may take you, and what software may help your research or your presentation or visualisation of results.

Grace’s dissertation took her to Sunderland to road test the country’s first gas sniffer dog.  Collaborating with an Earth Science student to help her use the mapping products and with training from the geosciences team in using GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) accurate to 2cm, she plotted the gas leaks and successful finds by her faithful four legged co-worker.  The team demonstrated that a dog’s nose is as good conventional gas detection equipment, and could be very helpful with difficult to trace gas leaks.

Sniffer dog in high vis finds gas leak
Sniffer dog, image used with permission from Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.
Digimap illustrating gas leaks detected
Map created by student using EDINA Digimap https://digimap.edina.ac.uk/ and used with permission by Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences.

With many thanks to Dr Catherine Douglas, School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, for providing this content.

See what is available to you on the Maps Guide and take up opportunities to collaborate or share good practice with other disciplines. You never know where it might lead!

Please note: EDINA Digimap requires registration before use.

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Are you using the best information to make your point?

With the huge volume of information available and the speed with which you can find something on just about any topic with a simple search, it can be difficult to be sure that you are using the best quality information for your task. Your tutors will often give advice such as recommending that you use academic or peer-reviewed journal articles, and it can be tempting to stick to ‘safe’ types of information such as books.

But depending on your assignment topic, you will need to explore a breadth of different information types, including many that will be online. So how do you know which ones to you?

You will need to consider many issues, including authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage within an information source. This will help you make decisions about the quality of the information, its reliability and what role it could play within your thinking.

You will evaluate information all the time without thinking about it. It doesn’t need to be a conscious or difficult task. Our Six Questions video will help give you some ideas for the types of questions to keep in mind to make your own judgement.

You may also sometimes decide to include a piece of information, even though it may not be from a credible source or its impartiality is questionable, because it illustrates the point you are trying to make. Being aware of your reservations about a reference allows you to be more confident in your judgment.

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EndNote

What is EndNote?

The official blurb on EndNote is that it is “…the industry standard software tool for publishing and managing bibliographies, citations and references.”

Have you drifted off yet? Don’t – read on!

EndNote takes a little getting used to and we recommend you familiarise yourself with it at the start of your research process. But as Library Staff, we wouldn’t spend a significant amount of time demonstrating and training our academic staff and students on what EndNote is, and how to use it, if we didn’t think it was valuable. It will save you a huge amount of time in terms of writing up your assignments.

Essentially, you can use EndNote to create and organise a personal library of resources relevant to your research. You can import references from Library Search, and a huge range of databases such as Scopus, Web of Science, IEEE Xplore and Business Source Complete. You can ask EndNote to locate the full-text PDFs of the resources you are going to use in your research, and you can annotate them as you wish too. Did you know you can instruct Google Scholar to import references into EndNote? No? Try it. Finally, if you already have materials stored in your home folder (H:\) then you can attach them to a manually-created reference within EndNote, bringing all your research together in one place.

In addition to organising your references (and this is the clever bit) you can then get EndNote to ‘talk’ to your word processing software, e.g. Microsoft Word, and insert the citations into your work for you in your chosen referencing style, e.g. Harvard at Newcastle, Vancouver, APA or MLA. If you don’t want to do that, then EndNote will also allow you to create an independent bibliography of your references, saving you an awful lot of typing.

Using EndNote

Intrigued? You should be. Take a look at our EndNote Guide. It contains all the introductory information you need, step-by-step workbooks to train yourself on the use of EndNote (the Desktop and Online versions), videos, useful FAQs, and contacts for help, should you need it.

Finally, Newcastle University provides support for EndNote but it is not compulsory to use. You may prefer Mendeley, Zotero, RefWorks or another piece of bibliographic management software. That’s fine, whatever makes your referencing lives easier. Go on, give them a try.

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When is a website not a website?

A common mistake made in referencing is grouping all sources found online under the category and reference type of a website. Your aim should be to reference the information you have in front of you rather than where it was sourced. Simply grouping items found online as a website would be the equivalent of referencing a book by the publisher details rather than the author and title.

For example, a government publication found online would be referenced like this in Chicago.

United Kingdom. Department for Education. Cloud computing: how schools can move services to the cloud. London: The Stationary Office, 2016. Accessed: February 01, 2018. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cloud-computing-how-schools-can-move-services-to-the-cloud. 

An electronic journal article might appear like this in APA.

Gillum, J. (2012). Dyscalculia: Issues for practice in education psychology.  Educational Psychology in Practice, 28(3), 287-297. doi:10.1080/02667363.2012.684344

While a video posted on the Tate website would look something like this in Harvard.

TateShots (2016) Grayson Perry: think like an artist. Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/grayson-perry-think-artist-tateshots (Accessed: 27 November 2018). 

Identifying the type of information you are using as well as the source, are essential skills of evaluation and developing a critical approach to information. In many cases, you will be unconsciously using your judgment to assess the value of information for your purpose. So when you are using any source of information, ask yourself what it is you are looking at, what details are recorded about it, and whether it measures up as a quality piece of information.

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To google or not to google?…That is the question

Can you remember life before Google? It is such a huge part of our lives that even those of us who can remember a time before it (hmmm, yes I am that old!) can’t imagine life without it now. It is a great place to find the latest cinema listings or who won last night’s football match, but what about finding information for your latest assignment or research?

There is a time and a place to use Google, but you need to be aware of its limitations. Google, after all, is a business. It earns the majority of its money from advertising, and it will not reveal how it ranks its search results (every wonder how Wikipedia always appears at the top of every search you do?). A search that we do today and repeat tomorrow for a piece of research could give us hugely different results, with no explanation of why. We are also often bombarded with millions of search results and the reality of our searching habits mean that we rarely look beyond the first or second page.  Admittedly, advanced search features on Google and the use of Google Scholar can really help us to become a smarter and effective Google users, but is it enough for our own research? Are we finding everything that is out there?

We need to think about our information needs before we work out where it will be best for us to search. Imagine, for a moment, that we are want to buy a particular local cheese, which we love. Would we go to a general shop or would we go to a specialist deli? We are probably going to need to go to a deli. It is just the same when searching for information. Google may be great for some background information or a starting point of a project, but it may simply not give us the high quality, niche information that we need to give us top marks for an assignment. So what are the other options?

Aimee Cook, a Liaison Librarian here at Newcastle University, explains more.

So next time you think about googling something for an assignment, stop and check out Library Search and your subject guide first for the books, eBooks and specialist databases that are available to you. If you are going to use Google, make use of the advanced search features and get to grips with Google Scholar. Happy searching!

Photo by Emily Morter on Unsplash