App Swap at The University of Cambridge

Andy Tattersall

 I've run several App Swap Breakfasts at the University of Sheffield and had the opportunity to run one for librarians at The University of Cambridge earlier this week as part of their on-going professional development programme. App Swap Breakfasts began life at The University of Brighton and instantly caught my eye as a great way to share good practice with mobile devices but also highlight useful apps that peers might be missing.



I gave the presentation to about 16 librarians from across the various campuses and started by talking about some of the really useful peripherals you can buy for your mobile device. These included my Lightning to VGA connector (I have a HDMI one too), my X Mini speakers, and the tripod stand for holding your tablet device straight and give you a free hand. It was a good opportunity to discuss the issues around having apps and was interesting to find out that more than half of those in attendance didn't have a tablet device - thankfully I had a second one for them to look at with some of my featured apps installed on it.

I gave the presentation below on 20 featured apps which focused on pure library apps, ones for communications and productivity as well as those to help with teaching and research. It was good to showcase the likes of Ad

obe Voice and Haiku Deck as well as Explain Everything for screen capture and Hootsuite for Twitter curation. The full list and presentation are below. I also met with an ex Sheffield colleague afterwards and was given a short personal tour of the campus and city which as you'd imagine was really nice. It was interesting to find out that Cambridge has no less than 114 libraries and that until recent times new starters had to sign a charter to say they would live within five miles of the university.

It was a long round trip of about eight hours, but well worth it to visit such an impressive campus and deliver a workshop around apps, even though there was no breakfast. You can see which 20 apps I chose to showcase in my Haiku Deck below.

Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires

Yet more from the Information Resources Academic Development Group

Louise Preston

Within our team in Information Resources, we have a wealth of experience and a real diversity in skills and knowledge. Everyone, in every workplace wishes they had more time for professional development, and within Information Resources, we carve out an hour, every six weeks, to get together to talk about our work and focus on our development, as part of our Information Resources Academic Development Group (IRADG). Louise Preston looks at what's happening in the IRADG.

I last blogged about the IRADG back at the end of 2014 and the group had a small hiatus whilst I was on maternity leave.

However we are back and stronger than ever (or something like that!). We rotate our meeting topics, as we are such a diverse group, with alternate meetings focusing on searching and the interim meetings focusing on teaching and research respectively. This allows us to address the needs of everyone in the group, whilst acknowledging that the vast majority of us got into the role through information science and librarianship roles.

It has been really useful having Mark and Naila, as newer members of Information Resources at the meeting, as they bring knowledge and expertise from their previous roles that add to our experience.

So far in 2016, we have spent some time grappling with the advanced capabilities of Endnote (as we have relatively recently moved to Endnote from Reference Manager) and spent time discussing the development of teaching and training materials for online learning, and the pedagogical differences between face to face learning and online learning….and it’s only the start of March!

In our next session we are planning to discuss the following paper about the role of stakeholders in systematic reviews Recording and Accounting for Stakeholder Involvement in Systematic Reviews.

Information Resources, despite being a small team, always provides a team member to participate in the “Gone in 60 Seconds” slot, as part of our larger section meetings, with our colleagues in Health Economics and Decision Science – this month Angie Rees is going to talk about the ScHARR Health Utilities Database. This ensures that the work we do gets regularly shared with our colleagues in ScHARR.

Our future plans include a session on development of models and searching to populate these, from our very own Suzy Paisley and a catch up on all the conferences and seminars we have been attending and presenting at in 2016.

So as you can see, as well as focusing on our day to day jobs, we all enjoy taking the opportunity to get together and learn from one another!

HS&DR research on group clinics

Anna Cantrell

Research completed by the Evidence Synthesis Centre, commissioned by the NIHR Health Services & Delivery Research programme "What is the evidence for the effectiveness, appropriateness and feasibility of group clinics for patients with chronic conditions? A systematic review" was published in the NIHR Journals Library in December 2015. Louise Preston and Anna Cantrell were key researcher and information specialists on this project, working alongside Andrew Booth, Duncan Chambers and Professor Elizabeth Goyder. 

The research reviewed the evidence for groups clinics for patients with chronic conditions considering their effectiveness, appropriateness and feasibility. The review concluded that there was consistent and promising evidence for an effect of group clinics for some biomedical measures, but that the effect was not across all outcomes. The majority of the primary study had been conducted in the USA and it would be very important to engage with UK stakeholders about specific considerations for implementing group clinics within the NHS. As an outcome of this review a HS&DR funding call was issued and primary research on this topic has now been commissioned.

Following our recent returns from maternity leave Louise and I have returned to our roles as researchers and information specialists for the centre with meetings for these projects now replacing our attendance together at baby yoga. 

Photo by Carolina Egana

Just Write!

Mark Clowes

We've talked before on this very blog about the pressure to publish and the challenges of making time for writing in our busy working lives, and Mark Clowes is pleased to report our ScHARR Write Club is still going strong!  

I recently had the opportunity to attend an excellent course on academic writing entitled 'How to write a scientific paper - and get it published', developed by former journalist Tim Albert and delivered by the extremely engaging Mark Pickin.

Participants were encouraged to attend the course having already completed a piece of research or having an idea for a paper; and then over the course of two days, this would be developed into a plan for publication.

It's a very interactive course with lots of group discussion to identify the barriers to writing (and then work out strategies to deal with them); and there were plenty of practical tasks to help us start to get something down on paper and overcome writer's block.

I can't possibly do justice in a brief blog post, but here are a few key points I took away from it:

DAY ONE

1. Know your audience

Write with a specific readership and target journal in mind.  What sort of topics are they interested in?   Are you responding to an ongoing theme or thread of discussion within that journal?   What is the correct tone?   The more you know about your target journal and readership, and tailor your paper to their preferences, the more likely it is to be accepted.

2. Know your message

What do you want to say?  Can you summarise your argument / the conclusions of your research into a single sentence?  If you can't, either it's not sufficiently clear or you may have more than one message (in which case, perhaps you need to think about two or more publications).

The course also gave valuable advice on where to situate your message within the body of your article to give it maximum prominence.

3. Ruminate

Have a good think around your topic before facing that daunting blank page.  For some people, this might work best away from the desk - go for a walk, wash the dishes, do the ironing... a bit of exercise or mindless repetitive activity can give you fresh perspective.

When you're ready to put something down on paper, start with a brainstorm or mind-map - this helps you see connections between different ideas and topics; and might also help you to identify any gaps which you need to address.   We were prompted to think about four or five key questions about our study, which gave us a framework around which to structure our articles.

4. Writing takes less time than you think

Estimates vary as to how long it takes to write an article, but it can certainly feel like a lengthy, time-consuming task.  However, if you've done enough preparation, you can actually get something written relatively quickly.

After several hours of planning and rumination, the first day of the course ended with 10 minutes of "free writing" (using pen and paper) during which I managed to produce the first 400 words of my draft article!  The key is to switch off your critical faculties (or anything else that inhibits the creative process), get something down on paper and worry about correcting it later.

5. "First things first"  

For many people, writing is an "important" activity but rarely an "urgent" one.  The danger is that with our busy working lives, we spend all our time fire-fighting / dealing with e-mails and never get round to important non-urgent tasks.  To get around this, the course recommends allocating protected time first thing in the morning for writing BEFORE you get engrossed in dealing with your e-mails.

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Between the two workshops, participants were asked to complete a first draft of their paper (even if it was only handwritten) and - amazingly - most of us managed this!

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DAY TWO

Now that we had a draft, day 2 looked at the editing process.

Too often, people get bogged down in micro-editing (grammar, punctuation etc.) but...

6. Don't forget to macro-edit

Macro-editing involves looking at the structure of your article and ensuring it is appropriate for your target journal.   The course taught us to see beyond the content and identify the structure and format of articles in our target journals so that we could ensure that ours were the right fit.

7. Use plain English

Try to make your article as easy to read as possible by avoiding unnecessary jargon or - my own bad habit - long, rambling sentences.   This is of course especially important if you want your article to be readable to non-native English speakers.   We learned a simple technique to calculate the clarity (or otherwise!) of our writing style.

8. Planning your time

Set yourself a realistic deadline for submitting your article, and then work backwards from that date to set yourself "mini-deadlines" for each step in between (complete first draft; macro editing; micro-editing; proof-reading etc.).  One of the trickiest aspects can be dealing with co-authors, but the course offered advice on how to manage the contributions (and egos!) of others.

9. Dealing with rejection

The more prestigious and high impact your target journal is, the more submissions they will receive and therefore the more papers they reject.  If this happens, remember that you're in good company (everyone has had papers rejected), and there may be another journal who will be interested in publishing it; but remember to tailor it accordingly - this shouldn't take too long, but it is worth doing properly.

10. Dealing with acceptance(!)

Papers are very rarely accepted without some comments from peer reviewers.   Reviewers can sometimes be frustratingly vague or contradictory, but don't be discouraged - it's a sign your article is nearly there.

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Having been motivated by the course to "just get on with it" and increase my writing productivity, I wrote this post in around 45 minutes (and another 15 or so editing).    Unfortunately this means I've had to leave lots of things out, but if you want to know more...

• Contact Mark to arrange a similar course to be delivered at your institution

OR

• Pre-order the 4th edition of Tim Albert's book Winning the Publications Game - The Smart Way To Write Your Research Paper & Get It Published, on which the course is based.

Have We Got Reviews For You? A bite-size guide to finding review articles for scoping purposes.

Louise Preston and Mark Clowes were invited to deliver a session on "finding reviews" as part of the "BiteSize" staff training series at ScHARR.   

Our target audience was the busy researcher who wants to do a quick search for scoping purposes; not the systematic reviewer who needs a more rigorous and replicable method (we might need more than 20 minutes to do that justice!)

After dealing with the thorny question of "what is a review?" and highlighting Andrew Booth's excellent typology, we went on to highlight a few of our favourite specialist sites for finding reviews & evidence syntheses; then offered some tips on searching more general sources.    Finally, the session gave us an opportunity to promote the support available from the Information Resources team at ScHARR.

Have We Got Reviews For You? How to do a quick scoping search to find review articles. 
from scharrlib

P.S. We know some readers of this blog are librarians/information specialists - which resources would you highlight if you were asked to present to this audience?

Top 10 Articles Featuring Information Resources in 2015 According to Altmetric.com

Andy Tattersall

2015 was a busy year for HEDS researchers, Andy Tattersall looks at the top 10 publications featuring Information Resources staff according to their altmetric score.


Altmetrics are alternative indicators for scholarly reach and creates an altmetric score based on Tweets, Mendeley saves, blog posts, media coverage and Facebook Shares among other indicators. 122 articles were included in the data, which are HEDS publications mentioned in the last year, but not exclusive to 2015. According to the altmetric data IR-related publications were covered in 10 blogs, 22 policy documents, 11 Wikipedia entries, was subject to 1253 Tweets and 27 Facebook shares. The data was gartered between 18th January 2015 to 18th January 2016.

Below is the table to the top 10 with Andrew Booth taking top spot with a paper he co-authored in PLOS. The paper was Tweeted 290 times, saved to Mendeley 49 times, CiteUlike 4 times and blogged once. Not all publications covered in the complete list was published in 2015, but were still communicated and shared in 2015, thus showing the long tail of our research.
The full list of research included in the 2015 export can be viewed here:


IR Altmetrics Chart 2015

Top 10 Articles According to Altmetric.com Featuring IR staff

We can also see from the data the publications IR staff published the most in with HTA Reports taking top spot. As for the journals, Health Information & Libraries Journals published 10 articles.

Top Publications for IR and supported research

Finally we can see the reach of our research on Twitter with 51% of Tweets happening outside of the UK, with 163 North American Tweeters sharing our research, making up for 20% of all IR-related research Tweets in 2015.

Tweets by location for IR-related research

Cilip MmIT talks on Digital Citizenship

Andy Tattersall

Last week I delivered my yearly talk as part of the Cilip Multimedia Information Technology Committee (MmiT) AGM at Cilip. I say yearly as I have delivered a talk at each of the MmIT AGMs as the secretary of the committee, but also I don't think anyone dare not tell me I can't do it any more ;-)

I was lucky to be speaking alongside two esteemed speakers who are both very active in the area of digital citizenship. Firstly Helen Milner OBE, the Chief Executive of the Tinder Foundation which sets out to improve digital inclusion and tackle social challenges through digital solutions. We were also very lucky to have Ian Clark who is a librarian from the University of East London and no stranger to the issues facing society and digital citizenship, especially when it comes down to issues relating to privacy and the web. 

The theme of the talks were about digital citizenship and was well attended by about 50 library and information professionals from across the various sectors. All the presentation abstracts and slides can be viewed below.

Helen Milner - Chief Executive of the Tinder Foundation.

'Why libraries are vital to closing the digital divide'

 Abstract: There are 12.6 million people in the UK without basic digital skills, who are missing out on opportunities to save money, connect with friends and family, learn more about their hobbies and much more. Not only that, but they’re also becoming excluded from accessing basic services - like being able to apply for jobs, find health information, or access other government services.

 The Tinder Foundation are great believers in the huge benefits of the Internet and the social value of the Internet for someone with low digital skills. Through its network of community partners the Tinder Foundation has supported over 1.6 million people to improve their digital skills since 2010, and learners have gone on to realise a range of benefits, from ordering prescriptions online, applying for and securing jobs, and setting up their own businesses. Helen's talk will cover much of this work and what part libraries can play in aiding it.

Why Libraries are Vital to Closing the Digital Divide from MmIT - Multimedia Information Technology Group for CILIP

Ian Clark - Radical Librarians Collective

 The digital divide in the post-Snowden era

 Abstract: In 2013, Edward Snowden exposed a range of revelations that have provided us with a welcome opportunity to re-evaluate our relationship with the Internet. Traditionally conceived as a place to seek information, the Internet has increasingly become a place where personal data is harvested by both government agencies and corporate entities. The revelations resulted in IFLA releasing a Statement on Privacy in the Library Environment that recommends that library and information services should respect and advance privacy both at the level of practice and as a principle. Previously, the digital divide has been seen in terms of access and general skills, but the Snowden revelations have revealed another aspect of the digital divide: the privacy divide. Ian’s talk seeks to understand the nature of this divide, who it affects, how the divide manifests itself and how it is being tackled.

The Digital Divide in the Post Snowden Era Presentation from MmIT - Multimedia Information Technology Group for CILIP

 Andy Tattersall - Information Specialist - The University of Sheffield 

Is it the responsibility of the academy to teach social media to students and academics?

 Abstract: There are over two million students in higher education and the majority are actively engaged in digital technology from social media to mobile technologies. Whilst being adept at using these technologies little consideration is given to how they can be leveraged to shape a professional career after graduating. Whilst issues around ethics, privacy and security are rarely considered, they are increasingly relevant. Is it the duty of the academy to help students manage a better professional online persona, or do we risk teaching them to suck eggs?

Is it the responsibility of the University to teach Social Media to Students and Academics? from MmIT - Multimedia Information Technology Group for CILIP

Links
Ian Clark
The Tinder Foundation