Theme: Technology

• Surveys are a popular way to collect data on a range of topics related to your library service but it is all too easy to get them wrong. If you struggle to design effective surveys you are not alone – they are often far more complex than they look.

• This interactive session will outline the basics of designing a survey, how to draft questions to get the answers you really want, some of the common pitfalls to avoid, the different software options available to help you and some tips and tricks for using surveys effectively. At the end of the session attendees will be able to put together a successful survey on a range of topics. If attendees wish to bring a draft survey that they are working on to use during the session they are welcome to do so.

There are hundreds of databases available to us in Cambridge. How confident do you feel navigating them and recommending them to end users? For this session we have four faculty librarians who will demonstrate Scopus, ArtSTOR, Lexis and Westlaw and statistics and markets business databases. There will be plenty of time for questions.

In this session, you will have a tour of the studio and facilities in the DCU as well as the opportunity to learn how the digitisation process works and what services are available through the University Library’s Digital Content Unit.

NB: A short break will be included during the session.

This session will provide you with a brief introduction to some of those technologies and highlight how you can delve deeper with them. We will look at the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), text and data mining, and the International Image Interoperability Framework (iiif).

NB: A short break will be included during the session.

Impact and sustainability are very important to researchers. Social media brings with it the advantage of making outputs easy to share but can also be a minefield. Whilst the new tools and methods utilised by the digital humanities provide exciting new ways of working, we also need to bear in mind their limitations and be able to understand the results. Attention is also being turned towards sustaining digital outputs, so we will also explore developments in this area as well.

NB: A short break will be included during the session.

Bewildered by business models? Dubious about DRM? Flummoxed by formats? Come to our ebooks training session where we will try and demystify all things ebook and help you to support your users.

We have re-vamped the content of this session this year, we are not concentrating so heavily on the basics, and will instead introduce some new information on aspects such as troubleshooting, file formats and accessibility.

The presentation part of the course will run for an hour and there is an optional 30 minutes where you are welcome to stay and work through the workbook of practise exercises. In the presentation we will introduce the ebooks@cambridge service, investigate the differences between purchase models, licenses and supplier platforms, and talk about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and ebook formats. We will also demonstrate ways of searching for ebooks in iDiscover and in Alma, how to use/download/print ebooks, and look at the differences between purchased and electronic legal deposit ebooks. We will discuss some common problems reported to the ebooks team, and touch on accessibility issues (including alternative format requests).

After the presentation attendees will be given a takeaway workbook of ebook-related exercises which will give them a chance to familiarise themselves with the breadth of our ebook collections. Librarians from the ebooks Advisory Group will be on hand to help answer any ebook-related questions you may have.

This session is aimed at newer members of library staff and those who would like a refresher on all things ebook.

Most institutions are now using Instagram as way to connect to their readers. However, keeping your feed full of exciting content can be difficult. Luckily, we have a brand new class to help manage your Institution's page. Barney Brown from the University's central Communications Office and Naomi Polonsky of the New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards have kindly offered to host a workshop demonstrating how effective Instagram can be as a social platform. As well as talking about the basics they will be delving into why we use Instagram, what makes Instagram a good platform to connect with readers, what tips and tricks they have to maintain a healthy feed, what mistakes they have made and what to avoid as well as deciding on an institution style.

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.

There will be an opportunity to address user case studies in this session. Please send any case studies to Lynne Meehan (lm746@cam.ac.uk) by 17/1/2019.

Do you use Instagram for your Library but would like some pointers how to make your posts more creative? This is the masterclass for you. With the help of the Digital Content Unit, you will learn how to construct photographs and videos that grab readers' attention, and to utilise Instagram tools to give you the best results. Please make sure you have an Instagram account set up and remember to bring your phones! We look forward to seeing you there.

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.

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.

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.

• Are you completely new to Twitter and struggling to start? Or are you already on Twitter but know you could be making better use of it to promote yourself and your library? Join Librarians In Training for an interactive workshop aimed at helping librarians to make the most of their time online.

• This interactive session will give you the chance to enhance your Twitter skills. For those new to the platform there will be guidance on what Twitter can be used for and how to get started whilst those already using Twitter will benefit from learning how to engage library users, promote their service and enhance their own professional network.

• The session will include both advice and practical exercises so you can put your new knowledge to the test.