From Wednesday 2nd to Tuesday 8th of October, Bill Bryson Library hosted our ‘Welcome Fair’. Coming to into a Library the size and scale of the Billy B or the first time can be a bit of a daunting experience for many, so we wanted to offer a friendly and approachable hello! We also looked to make our students (both new and existing!) feel welcome in our spaces by promoting awareness and encouraging engagement with everything we have to offer across all of Library and Collections. Plus, we wanted our users to know that we are here to support them all throughout their time at Durham.
Continue reading “Welcome week and ongoing support”Infinity Internship
A post by Learning Coordinator Charlotte Spink and Infinity Intern Ailsa
In early summer 2022, I was approached by the Careers & Enterprise and Disability Support Service to join their Infinity Internship Programme. Infinity places Durham University students with autism in paid internships both inside and outside the University with the aim of benefitting both parties. The programme aims to access a pool of often untapped talent, promote diversity and inclusion and develop students’ knowledge and skills.
Applicants go through an application and recruitment process to ensure they are a good fit for the host organisation. In July our first Infinity Intern – Ailsa – arrived at the Oriental Museum.
Continue reading “Infinity Internship”New tutorials – Open Research and Google Scholar
Over the past couple of years, we have been working to create a suite of tutorials to help our users search for good quality academic resources and literature effectively. Our latest two tutorials have recently gone live.
Continue reading “New tutorials – Open Research and Google Scholar”Playful Learning Conference 20/21/22
A post by Faculty Librarian Ben Taylorson
Earlier this summer I had the pleasure of attending the Playful Learning conference in Leicester. This was the second time I’d been able to attend – the last being in 2019 before everything went awry. The conference was back after a 2-year hiatus, and the organisers made up for it with a packed calendar of sessions, talks and activities.
Continue reading “Playful Learning Conference 20/21/22”Tutorials and our Faculty Librarians
We’ve posted previously about the suite of online tutorials we have been developing. There are now 12 of these that are live, covering a range of different topics:
- Introduction to dissertation research
- Catalogue and discover
- Basic literature searching
- Bibliographic databases
- Accessing full text online
- Referencing
- Your reading list and beyond
- The Information Cycle
- Plagiarism and copyright in the academic context
- Using archives and special collections in your research
- Research in museums and galleries
- Palaeography
Creating a tutorial
Over the course of the last couple of months I have been working the Durham Centre for Academic Development (DCAD) to produce an interactive online tutorial titled Your Reading List and Beyond.
This tutorial is part of ‘phase 2’ or our overall tutorial programme. Phase 1 was designed, constructed and delivered in 2020 and consists of 6 tutorials which are available individually, whilst also designed to fit together to support the needs of dissertation students, whilst been available to all as standalone tutorials.
Continue reading “Creating a tutorial”Dissertation advice
One of the key responsibilities for our Faculty Librarians is to support our dissertation students, many of whom will be undertaking a substantial research project for the first time. Although we would always urge our students to consider what materials and resources they are actually going to have access to (this could be in terms of accessing a physical collection such as an archive, or being able to use, say, a particular database), this year it is more important than ever.
Continue reading “Dissertation advice”#OpenAccessWeek2020: Open Access articles and teaching
The current situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has brought with it the (even more) urgent need to provide online access to journal articles and books. This is not always easy or possible to do via subscriptions, and it is certainly not always affordable. It makes it more important than ever that we look to those high-quality resources that are openly available and consider how these can be utilised successfully for teaching purposes.
Continue reading “#OpenAccessWeek2020: Open Access articles and teaching”Going beyond your reading list…
Last week we introduced a range of new Guides available for staff and students across the University, and yesterday we highlighted some of the features you may have missed in our new Reading Lists platform. Today we’d like to highlight the support available to you on our Research Skills Guide to help you navigate the collections and resources available to you beyond your reading list. Read on to find out more…
Continue reading “Going beyond your reading list…”Making the most of your reading list
As term is now underway, many of our new and returning students and colleagues will have been exploring our new Reading Lists. We thought we’d take this opportunity to highlight and explore some of the additional functionality they offer to you – from adding notes, to managing your reading progress and references for your bibliography.
To help, we spoke to one of our Faculty Librarians, Richard Holmes, who was part of a team of colleagues across the service who got this up and running in record time for the start of term.
Continue reading “Making the most of your reading list”
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