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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.

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 course is based on a typical literature review lifecycle. You start by planning your search. You then carry out your search. Once you've found some results, you evaluate what you have found to see if it is relevant to your needs. You manage your results by saving them to a suitable place so you can come back to them. If you are interested in tracking changes in your field, you enact approaches to keep up to date with new research. And as your research evolves, you refine your search to reflect new concepts and new terms. And so the cycle continues.

While you may not be as focused on the longer term tracking of new research in your field, being able to plan, search, evaluate and manage effectively are additional skills which we will cover in this course. The course will be structured around the first four stages described above, with optional additional information about the last two stages for those who are interested.

This course is supplemented by live workshop opportunities throughout the academic year.

This session discusses the benefits and challenges of maintaining an online presence as a researcher. Part of two sessions on this topic, this first session looks at setting up your academic persona and using academic platforms. Starting with exploring what comes up through a quick Google search all the way through to maintaining profiles on academic sites, we will look at the pros and cons of online engagement. This will include tools such as ORCID, and networking sites such as academia.edu and ResearchGate.

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.

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.

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.

Narrative CVs provide space for candidates to elaborate on their contributions to the research community that go beyond traditional outputs such as publications. The hope is that, by encouraging candidates to provide evidence for, and selection panels to consider, qualities that promote good research cultures, such as open research practice, we will start to select candidates who demonstrate this in addition to their traditional research contributions. What does this mean for researchers at Cambridge? This session will introduce some of the current formats of narrative CVs being used or considered by funding bodies in the UK and Europe and the implications for researchers, and recruiters and selectors of researchers who might use them. Since the format is still very much under development in the sector, the session will provide an opportunity for participants to discuss and feed back on what they see as the benefits and challenges of narrative CVs. The workshop leaders will feed the outcome of this session into relevant discussions happening nationally around the development and adoption of narrative CVs.

From fair dealing to sharing your research online it seems that nothing with copyright is ever simple. There are few black and white rules about copyright but there can be serious consequences for getting things wrong! This session will cover the basics of UK copyright law and how these impact researchers such as dealing with third party materials, seeking permissions and how to manage risk.

Please note: This session will be offered, either online or in person, in Michaelmas, Lent and Easter terms.

Copyright law is a complex field with direct relevance for researchers who need to protect their own intellectual work and use work written by others, and most importantly must avoid accidentally infringing copyright. This course provides you with basic knowledge you can apply to your research practice.

The course covers:

• fundamentals of copyright and why it’s important
• what to do if you want to use someone else’s work
• how to protect and share your own work
• how licenses can be used to make it easier to reuse works

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

This session will help researchers explore academic literature through discussing key skills such as critical evaluation, structural reading, effective note-taking, and getting started with writing.

Ever wondered what lies behind the scenes of the Music Department at the UL? Following a quick tour of the open stacks, Music Department staff will take you to delve into the odd architecture of South Court, say hello to our elephants, meet some of our rarest and tiniest books, and discover why music librarians sometimes need to be good detectives. There’ll also be a guide to finding music, for those who haven’t used our card catalogues before.

• Nervous or intimidated about visiting the UL for the first time?
• Don’t know where to begin with a Literature search?
• Can never find the books you need on the open shelves?

Ask a librarian!

Individual or small group supervision style sessions tailored to your needs. Available online or face-to-face.

If you would prefer a different day or time, email readerservices@cam.ac.uk to arrange a session. Tell us what you need help with and we’ll match you with a member of library staff who can show you what you need to know, whether it’s searching the catalogue, using Electronic Legal Deposit, finding open shelf books or something else entirely.

Don't suffer in silence - Ask a Librarian!

This session is designed for anyone who would like to learn more about how to read academic literature. This hour long workshop explores reading techniques, article structures and productive reading, while also providing techniques you can use to tackle your weekly readings.

Learning critical reading skills is a useful way to make better notes from what you have read and can help you to organise and plan what you read. This session will help you to put these skills to good use and become more confident at reading academic literature.