ScHARR Library are launching a new series of short 20 minute 'coffee break' sessions to give staff and PhD students a taste of the many tools, websites and techniques you can employ to work smarter. Ask yourself these questions...
Have you ever wanted to be more flexible with your work?
Have you ever wanted the ability to stay in touch with your research areas any where on the globe?
Do you want to learn about new tools and websites and just don't feel you have the time?
Do you want to form new networks and find people with similar research interests from any where in the World?
Do you want to find the hot topics in your area?
Do you want to create innovative presentations, learn better search techniques, have access to documents any time on any PC and manage your references whilst discovering new research?
Imagine Swine Flu returns, an Ash Cloud leaves you stuck abroad, Regent Court has a power cut - could you still work effectively?
Do you only have 20 minutes free and fancy a cake to go with that mid afternoon hot drink?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, read on....
The sessions aim to be about 20 minutes long and are presented by ScHARR's team of Information Specialists. Over the course of the next few months we hope to show you some of the latest tools that can help you to work more flexibly, efficiently and smarter. All we ask is you give at least one of them a go, all you need to do is turn up with a beverage and we'll supply the tubs of bite size flapjacks and mini rolls.
Bite Size Session #1 - November 10th - 2.30pm - Eric Wilkes Room - Go beyond Reference Manager - Mendeley
Billed as the iTunes for scientific research, Mendeley is one of many next generation reference management tools. Andy Tattersall will give a brief insight into what Mendeley does and what sets it apart from its counterparts, especially traditional reference management tools such as Endnote and Reference Manager.
Foe more information go to:
Future sessions:
All 2.30 pm till 2.50pm in the Eric Wilkes Room
Bite Size Session #2 - December 1st - Claire Beecroft - Prezi
Prezi- Prezi is an on-line tool for creating presentations using 'zooming' to make the presentation more entertaining and more user-friendly. You can zoom in on text and images to highlight key areas and improve student engagement and understanding. It is very quick to learn and you can store your Prezi's both on and off-line, share them or make them private, and copy a completed Prezi so that you can make minor amendments and re-use it for a different purpose! It's fab, its free, and it kicks PowerPoint in to touch. Its the single easiest way to give your teaching or research presentation the 'wow' factor and you can learn it in less that 20 mins- what's not to like?
Bite Size Session #3 - December 15th - Anthea Sutton - PBWiki, uSpace Documents and Disposable Web Pages
Fed up of email attachments clogging up your inbox? Collaborating with others on a document and struggling to know which is the most recent version? Spending lots of time collating comments on a document? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then this could be the session for you!
This session will cover several ways to make collaborating on writing documents a whole lot easier. You may already be familiar with Uspace but did you know you can upload documents allowing others you are working with to edit and add comments. In addition, in this session we will also look at the Wiki
PBWorks, which is a free online workspace which allows the easy creation of a project website which can be used for discussions and to upload documents to name a few functions. Finally, we will show you how to create disposable web pages – web pages that are easy to create and that can be set to self-destruct after 90 days – great for any short-term project work you want to do.
So, come along, see what’s what, and help make email attachments a thing of the past!*
January 12th 2011 Andy Tattersall - rss for Research
January 26th 2011 Angie Rees - Pubget / Louise Guillaume - Google Scholar
February 9th 2011 Andy Tattersall - Professional Social Networks
February 23rd 2011 Andy Tattersall - Visual Social Bookmarks
Can any PhD supervisors please inform your students of these sessions.
