Cambridge University Libraries course timetable

One session - four medicine and life science databases - widest coverage for your literature search. PubMed is great, but it doesn't cover all the journals relevant to life sciences and medicine. Embase, Web of Science and Scopus can also be relevant and each covers unique material. Come to this hands-on session to learn how to get the best from each of these "4 tops".

This session is aimed at University of Cambridge staff or students who have already had prior training in database searching. Those who want to attend an introductory session should book onto the Introduction to Literature Searching course, or the Getting the Best Results - Improving Your Database Searching if they are NHS staff.

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.

This course will help you understand how to critically appraise a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). Using the CASP Checklist, the course covers samples and sample size, randomisation, bias, statistics, significance (P Values and Confidence Intervals) and relevance.

We ask that you read a paper that will be provided before you attend the session, in order for us to make the best use of the time together.

This session will introduce you to Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/), a free tool to manage bibliographies and bibliographic databases.

This session will cover the things you need to consider in order to reach your audience effectively through publication. It will introduce how you should decide which academic journal is most appropriate for your research, including considerations such as journal rankings, publication times, fees and your own publication history. It will also cover the concept of using pre-print servers before publication - when and where to post your work and the benefits it can bring.

Please bring your own internet-enabled device to this session.

This session will cover the basic principles of the microblogging platform Twitter. Participants will have the opportunity to get to grips with using Twitter and understanding the platform’s unique community and language through hands-on activities. Aspects of science communication will be touched upon as well as examples of best practice, using Twitter personally and professionally, before concluding with some top tips on getting the most out of this communication tool.

If this session is fully booked please join the waiting list - we will move venues if there is demand.

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.

This session equips participants with all the fundamental skills that they need to build and execute effective search strategies to locate and critically evaluate relevant materials for assignments, literature reviews, projects and other related research activities. The structure of the session with move through the processes of basic keyword generation, constructing search strings, understanding which resources to search, before finishing with developing critical evaluation skills to assess quality and relevance of found items.

Useful databases such as Scopus and Web of Science will be demonstrated as part of this session.

If this session is fully booked please join the waiting list - we will move venues if there is demand.

This course will help you understand how to critically appraise a systematic review, assessing its reliability, trustworthiness, and applicability.

We ask that you read a paper that will be provided before you attend the session, in order for us to make the best use of the time together.

A course specifically for NHS staff. Attendees will learn how to search databases accessed with an Athens login (such as Medline, Embase and Cinahl) effectively and efficiently, to learn how to save searches and references, and to create and maintain a bibliography.

All attendees are required to have an NHS Athens login. University of Cambridge staff and students wanting to learn similar material should book onto the Introduction to Literature Searching (for University) course instead.

A thirty minute introduction to the UL, aimed at those using our facilities and collections over the summer vacation period. An experienced member of staff will meet you in the Entrance Hall then lead you on a twenty minute tour of the UL,taking in the Locker Room, Open Bookstacks, Reading Room and West Room. Ten minutes are reserved after the tour for a question and answer session.

There is an increasing emphasis in research on the management and sharing of data. Many funding bodies that support research undertaken at Cambridge require not only open access to any publications based on that research, but also to the data underlying it. This course will help you understand funders’ requirements for management and sharing of research data, and will provide opportunities to create your own data management plan and test out resources that will make the data management process easier.

A course designed to take you step-by-step through academic writing and publication, with tips and resources to make writing up as simple as possible. The course will demystify the peer-review process, and help you to improve the precision and clarity of your academic writing.

A course to take you through conference poster design, with tips and resources to help with the content and presentation in order to ensure you communicate your research effectively. The course will cover where to source good quality, free graphics, how to include references in your poster, and advice about how best to present it at a conference.

A thirty minute introduction to the UL, aimed at those using our facilities and collections over the summer vacation period. An experienced member of staff will meet you in the Entrance Hall then lead you on a twenty minute tour of the UL,taking in the Locker Room, Open Bookstacks, Reading Room and West Room. Ten minutes are reserved after the tour for a question and answer session.

A course to take you through conference poster design, with tips and resources to help with the content and presentation in order to ensure you communicate your research effectively. The course will cover where to source good quality, free graphics, how to include references in your poster, and advice about how best to present it at a conference.

This course will help you understand how to critically appraise a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT). Using the CASP Checklist, the course covers samples and sample size, randomisation, bias, statistics, significance (P Values and Confidence Intervals) and relevance.

We ask that you read a paper that will be provided before you attend the session, in order for us to make the best use of the time together.