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Effective note making is an essential bridge between reading and writing. When making notes for a long piece of writing, if you paraphrase and interpret as you go along, you will be able to retrieve what you have learned from reading quickly and efficiently and often produce sections that you can drop straight into your work. This session will introduce you to the theory of good note making, discuss different note making techniques and offer advice for deciding which approach best suits your practices.

Learning outcomes

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

• Explain the importance of strategic reading
• Identify strategic reading approaches that fit your needs
• Explain the difference between note taking and note making
• Explain the link between reading, note making and academic writing

Please note: This session will be offered again in Easter term, date to be confirmed.

The Critical Reading course aims to improve students' ability to read critically and evaluate sources, as well as giving helpful tips about productive reading, note taking and providing a checklist of questions to help them with their reading going forward. It is suitable for all students but aimed mostly at undergraduates.

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.

This session provides an overview of the extensive e-resources available to Divinity Undergraduates, including e-books, e-journals, databases and the use of Moodle.

This session provides an overview of the extensive e-resources relevant to Theology, Religious Studies and the Philosophy of Religion, including e-books, e-journals, databases and electronic legal deposit materials (journal articles and monographs).

This session provides an introduction to the use of IDiscover (the University Library catalogue), for new Postgraduate students and Academic staff, demonstrating the main functions of the catalogue and showing how to make the most effective use of its capabilities for locating books and journals in print and electronic form.

This session provides an introduction to the use of IDiscover (the University Library catalogue), for new Undergraduate students, demonstrating the main functions of the catalogue and showing how to make the most effective use of its capabilities for locating books and journals in print and electronic form.

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.

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.

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.

These twenty-minute sessions are chance to practice searching medical/scientific databases, use referencing software, and have your questions answered about literature searching for your dissertations.

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.

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.

Giving a presentation is something everyone has to do whether it is for your course, for an extracurricular activity or society event, or even in the workplace. In this session we'll take you through planning your presentation, how to make everything look good as well as accessible for a diverse range of audiences, as well as introducing you to techniques to present with confidence. And to help finish things off, we'll also give you some tips on how to deal with situations when it all goes a bit wrong.

This session equips participants with all the fundamental skills that they need to build and execute effective search strategies to locate relevant materials for literature reviews, projects and other related research activities. The session will explore key searching techniques, where to search, how to troubleshoot common searching problems, as well as keeping up to date with the latest research.

This session will include live demonstrations of scientific databases to demonstrate the key principles covered in action.

This live session is designed to build your skills in reading and assessing research articles for your Part II studies in Biological Sciences. We will cover how to approach reading for different purposes, apply different reading strategies, and critically evaluate articles. We will also spend some time on managing what you’ve read (or not yet read) and writing your literature review, including how to select items to include and reference them properly. There will be activities and discussions throughout the session so you can try your new skills and ask any questions you may have.

This session is for students taking a Biological Sciences route (NST and PBST) for Part II.

Fair attribution for technicians through either co-authorship or direct acknowledgement in research publications is a key component of the ‘visibility’ and ‘recognition’ areas of the Technician Commitment, of which the University of Cambridge was a founding signatory in 2017.

However, there is currently no policy or standard practice for acknowledging the role of technicians, equipment and facilities in the University or the wider sector. Technicians experience a great disparity in their recognition and visibility in scholarly outputs.

This interactive workshop, organised by the Biological Sciences Libraries Team, will introduce you to the scholarly communications process as well as tools such as CRediT and ORCID, and facilitate conversation amongst peers.

This live session is designed to build your skills in reading critically and assessing resources as part of your first year studies. Additional techniques around using effective note-taking, selecting what to read from lectures, as well as building your critical language when writing your first pieces of work will also be covered. There will opportunities for discussion throughout the session so you can ask any questions you may have.

This session is for students taking a Biological Sciences route (Natural Sciences, Psychology & MedVet) at Part IA/IB.

This live session builds on skills and knowledge developed through our online Introduction to Literature Searching course and live introductory sessions.

Join us as we move beyond basic searching and give you live demonstrations of some of the more detailed searches you can do using our databases, how you can get more information out, as well as a live exploration of the reference manager Zotero. We will have activities and opportunities for discussion throughout so this session will be truly tailored to your needs. We'll end with an opportunity to ask questions, learn from what other people have done and whatever else comes up.

This online interactive course will give you advice on how to survive your first year at Cambridge. Topics include introductions to note making, referencing, writing essays, and managing your time.

The course is aimed at Part IA students, with a Science focus. However, the course is open to anyone who wishes to use it, and will be useful for any discipline, or as a refresher for those wishing to learn some new tips and tricks.

Need to find scientific literature and resources for your Part II dissertation or project? We've got you covered.

In this session, we will introduce you to breaking down your research question, developing your keywords or vocabulary for what you want to search for, before putting it all together using tried and tested techniques to get the best results quickly. We'll show you where to find relevant and reliable resources, how to navigate pesky paywalls and even how to hack Google...legally of course!

If you can't make our live sessions, everything we talk about (and a little bit more) is covered in our self-guided online course.

Want something a bit more advanced? Check out our Going further with your literature searching for your Biological Sciences dissertation or project workshop which will show more detailed searching, demonstrate how the reference manager Zotero can help you at Part II, as well as leaving lots of time for questions and troubleshooting.

This session discusses the benefits and challenges of maintaining an online presence as a researcher. Part of two sessions on this topic, this second session looks at using social media as a researcher. We will look at the practicalities and pros and cons of online engagement through tools such as Twitter/X, Mastodon, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Participants should expect to have the opportunity to critically evaluate the various options presented in this session with the overall aim of being better informed when deciding where to invest their time and efforts when building an academic presence online.

You own your own research right? Well it depends...

This session will explore the sometimes complicated world of copyright and what can happen when publishing work through formal routes such as journals or through more informal routes such as pre-print servers. The session will also introduce concepts such as third party copyright and rights retention, as well as how licensing tools such as Creative Commons can be used to not only help maximise the reach of research but also navigating reusing other people's work.

In November 2021 UNESCO announced a Recommendation on Open Science to be adopted by member states. The Recommendation aims to define shared values and principles for open research and outline proposals to help facilitate the dissemination of research results to a wide audience.

As part of our Research Roundup series we will be holding a virtual brown bag lunchtime discussion on the Recommendation and what it could mean for local practice at Cambridge. Join us via Teams for an informal exploration of the Recommendation and share your thoughts with colleagues.

If you have any specific questions or areas you would like to discuss in the session please email Claire Sewell (ces43@cam.ac.uk) prior to the session.

Resources: UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. You may also like to watch this webinar recording of a session on recommended actions for publishers to take regarding the Recommendation.

Most people have online profiles and, as a researchers, your online presence offers many rich opportunities. It is helpful to be aware of tools and tips that can help you boost your visibility online, as well as common mistakes to avoid.

In this course, you will:

• begin to develop your online research profile by making yourself visible to others in a way(s) that suits you.
• learn what an ORCID is and how to obtain one.
• learn what your Symplectic Elements account is for and begin to make it work for you
• review your current visibility and consider the next steps

You will receive the URL for the course in the confirmation email after booking.