Getting Started Videos from the British Library

Have you used the British Library? If you haven’t but are interested in going there and (to quote them) exploring the world’s knowledge these videos will give you tips before you go (so it is a little less scary).

It is a great resource for researchers, staff and dissertation students.

1. Registering with the library

2. Using the Reading Rooms 

There are a few rules about using them so this is a great video so you know what to do before you go.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xozADbJg7yA

3. Exploring the Collections – Researcher

4. Exploring the Collections – Designer

Even if you don’t want to use it I’d recommend visiting the permanent Treasures of the British Library exhibition (see Jane Austen’s writing desk, The Magna Carta and Gutenberg Bible or any of their temporary ones.

ISI Web of Science / Knowledge ResearcherID

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This tool allows you to create an unique online profile that shows your publication history.

  1. Click on “Sign-up/Access my ResearcherID” along the right-hand side under “My ResearcherID” or click “My ResearcherID” along the top. You will be prompted to log into your ISI Web of Knowledge account with your username and password.
    2. Some of your information will be prepopulated in the Registration form. Complete any remaining fields and click the “Submit Registration” button at the bottom of the page.
    3. Accept the End User License Agreement.
    4. Registration completed.

Add your publications

1. Click on “Add Publication”
2. There are five ways of adding
publications via:
– ISI Web of Knowledge

– Web of Science®

1. Click on one of the links in “Add Publications“ to add a publication.
2. Enter last name and initials to search for records of relevant articles.
3. A list of records from the search will be shown.
4. Browse through all records and select the records for research papers you have written by clicking on “Add Selections to List”.

– Web of Science Distinct Author Set
– EndNote® Web

1. Click on the “Go to Endnote Web” link in ”Add To: My Publications” to add a publication.
2. a. If you are not currently a user, or are  not currently signed in to EndNote Web you will be prompted to register or log in. (More Information on Endnote Web is available here)
b. If you are already logged into EndNote Web via your integrated ISI Web of Knowledge or Web of Science
login, you will automatically be taken to your “My References” page.
3. Registered, logged in EndNote Web users will be taken to their “My References” page. From there you can select existing references to add to any of your 3 Publication Lists in ResearcherID. Select the references you
want to add and choose the preferred ResearcherID publication list in the “Add to group…” drop-down menu

– RIS file from EndNote, Reference Manager (RefMan) or other reference software

1. Click on one of the links in “Add Publications” to add a publication.

2. You can upload an RIS formatted text file which can be exported from EndNote, RefMan or other reference
software. The RIS format is a tagged file format for expressing bibliographic citations.

ResearcherID interactive Labs

ResearcherID includes an interactive Labs environment for exploration of author-level metrics. These tools allow for visual analysis of research networks based on:

  • Subject Category
  • Country / Territory
  • Institution
  • Author Name
  • Publication Year
  • Geographic Location

The tools include:

  • Citing Articles Network – Visually explore who is citing your published works.
  • Collaboration Network – Visually explore your collaboration associates.
  • Create a Badge – Place an image graphic on any Web site to show your membership in ResearcherID. The badge displays a real-time summary of your Profile and publications on mouse-hover.

Find Other Authors

You can also search for other authors in your field:

  1. Click on Additional Resources tab in ISI Web of Science:
  2. Select ResearcherID.com.
  3. Select a subject from the by Top Researcher Keywords. You will see a list of the most cited authors in this field. Clicking on one of the names leads to more information about the person.
  4. Try browsing one of the other categories.

Setting up a ProQuest Account

  1. Go to the E-Resources A-Z list: http://eresources.rhul.ac.uk/kb/Main_Page
  2. Go to any of these ProQuest databases: ProQuest Historical Newspapers, ProQuest Entrepreneurship, British Periodicals, FIAF International Index to Film Periodicals, Guardian and Observer, House of Commons Parliamentary Papers, John Johnson Collection, Literature Online (LION), New York Times, Periodicals Archive Online, PRISMA: Publicaciones y Revistas Sociales y Humanísticas (via Senate House)
  3. On the home page click the My Research (or on some databases My Archive) link
  4. On the log-in page click on the Create a My Research account link. This will take you to a registration page. You will need to enter a username and password and an email address to register. Once you have done this an email will be sent to you with a link which you will need to follow to confirm registration. Once you have registered you can sign in each time you visit the site to access your personal account and searches.

Note:  If you have not logged into ProQuest through your institution for a period of 76 days, you will be notified by email that your My Research account will become inactive after 90 days.

SimilarPages

SimilarPages is very good for finding new content.  Simply enter a URL you know and it finds related pages.

It indexes over 50 million websites and allows you to branch out further based on new sites found.

The SimilarPages Add-On is the free Web Discovery and Search Tool by SimilarPages. For any page you land on, SimilarPages add-on automatically generates a list of similar websites. All you have to do is to follow the links you are interested in.

Type a URL into the search box.

You will then get suggested sites (unless the URL is too obscure).

Similar pages

Creating Accounts in EBSCO databases

You can create your own log-in within these databases and save results to your own personal folder.

To create your account, simply click on the ‘sign in’ option along the top menu and then choose to create an account.

Sign in on Ebsco

The next time you log into an EBSCO database you can then ‘Sign in’ using your EBSCO user name and start adding things to your folder.  That way you’ll always have a record of the useful articles and reports you found.

When you are logged into your account the EBSCO symbol next to the search box will look like this:

My Ebsco

 

 

Tips on privacy and managing professional identities

facebook privateSomething which always causes concern when people mention social media or Web 2.0 is privacy and managing a professional personal balance.

One aspect of privacy is the information we choose to share and how that reflects on our professional identities.

 

This presentation from the University of Bath gives a very good overview of how to manage your professional identity:

Not everybody will want to be totally anonymous but in our online world it is important to be informed about privacy.

Take note of the privacy options available and adjust the settings where necessary when signing up to a new service. Many sites will give you a variety of options allowing you to set the privacy settings at a level to suit you. This will include an option to keep your whole profile private, or open to only those users you choose to share your information with.

But remember the more information we share the less control we have of it (This light hearted video is a good reminder).

Fact: Facebook’s privacy policy is longer than the United States Constitution (minus amendments) (Bilton, N., 2010. Price of Facebook? Start clicking! New York Times 12 May, p.B8 )

This page has some advice on how to keep social media private – it is aimed at teachers but the instructions are relevant.

The University has some social media guidelines which I would suggest you take a look at.

If you wish you can set your blog so search engines won’t find it easily by going to Dashboard > Settings > Reading  then select “Discourage search engines from indexing this site.”

Adapted from http://23thingswarwick.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/managing-your-online-identity.html under creative commons license and Emily Allbon’s presentation on Upgrade from City

 

Tools for finding Impact Factors

  • Journal Citation Reports via Web of Knowledge.

This is the key standard for Impact Factor data.  Available at RHUL: http://eresources.rhul.ac.uk/kb/JCR

Download the application from the website – you should be able to install it on your PC.  It uses data from Google Scholar, so it picks up titles not included in JCR, such as reports and other non peer-reviewed materials.  The results are therefore widely different from JCR and should not be directly compared.

Data is still being developed as this service is quite new.  It’s more about the number of author citations than about journal impact factors.

  • Scopus

Good subject coverage, but uses a different way of calculating impact factors from JCR so it is not possible to compare between the two. Available at RHUL: http://eresources.rhul.ac.uk/kb/Scopus

Takes data directly from JCR, but doesn’t usually include the most recent report data.

Google Search tips

The tips below are useful when searching Google and other databases.

Search term example  Explanation 
“ethical consumer” Use double quotes (“”) if you want Google to search a phrase in that exact order
beverages -tea Type a minus (-) sign immediately before the term you want to exclude. The minus sign should be placed immediately before the word preceded by a space. This search retrieves items on various beverages other than tea
“fair trade” tea OR coffee Google’s default is to search all the words you type in your search. If you want it to search either one or several words, you can use the OR operator (note that OR must be typed in upper-case)
“student protest” 1960..1970 If you want to limit the result to pages covering the subject within a specified date (e.g. 1960-1970) type the date separated by two stops (..) and no spaces
~school If you want to search for synonyms place the tilde ~ immediately in front of the word or phrase. Eg ~school will retrieve pages on college, academy, university, education, etc.
consum* Insert an asterisk (*) as a wildcard symbol. This allows stem or word variation searches. For example typing consum* will retrieve material on consumer, consumers, consumerism, consumption, etc.

Useful Tools: Evernote

The Research Pile
No more piles of notebooks

Evernote is a web application which is also available to download on to mobile devices, desktop PCs, lap tops and just about every computer. This means that you can literally use it anywhere and it will sync with on all your devices and the website.

Why use it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNE0R3rEe5Q

* You can log on to the web version (http://www.evernote.com/) anywhere with an internet connection and you can share your notes so it is a great way of quickly creating a simple web page or putting a plan together.
* You can clip all or part of a webpage into a note by using the web clipping tool (this is easier to install at work on Firefox than on Internet Explorer).
* You can create checklists so you can tick the boxes to keep track of what you have done.
* You can tag notes so notes in different notebooks can all use the same tage and be found on a search.
* If you are using it on a mobile device you can add a location so you can see all notes made at that location by you.

Evernote is particularly useful for projects as this video shows:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQP0gkPnEcY&feature=player_embedded

Examples of Evernote uses

Helen

RSS Feeds

What are RSS feeds?

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. An RSS feed is a way for you to receive updates to different websites without having to visit them. You can also use RSS feeds to publicise information about your own work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU


How do they help me, as a reader?
  • Save time
  • Keep Up to date
  • Everything is in one place

 

You will know if a page has an RSS feed as you will see a button (usually orange) similar to these: RSS logo RSS icon RSS XML icon

Clicking on one of those orange symbols will give you the URL (web address) for the RSS feed.


So how do I get started?
  • To receive a single feed by e-mail: look out for a “subscribe by e-mail” link on the website you want to watch.
  • To watch a handful of feeds you could create a start using an aggregator such as Google ReaderNewsGator’s suite of readers (including one for smart phones),Feedreader and FeedPixel.com.
How do I find RSS feeds that I want to look at?
  • Check if websites/online journals you use a lot have RSS feeds (look out for the orange logos).
  • Collect RSS feeds as you find them.
  • Search an RSS directory. You may find that your feed reader has its own directory, or you can do an Internet search for “RSS feed directory”.
  • When you run a search online, such as on Google or in a library-provided database of scholarly content, look out for the option to create an RSS feed for that search so that you will be alerted when new items matching your search criteria are found. You may have to explore advanced options or settings to set such a feed up.
  • If there is no RSS feed for a page that you think would be really useful, programs like Feedity can be used to create an RSS feed for that page.

 

I have an aggregator. What now?

Now you need to subscribe to some feeds. With either a web based aggregator or a desktop reader usually all you need to do is:

  • Click on the RSS or XML logo button on the web page you find interesting.
  • Copy and paste the URL (i.e. the Web address) from the rss feed page into your aggregator.
  • Some browsers/browser extensions will recognise that there is an RSS feed on a page and offer you an RSS button in the toolbar, which will link to your RSS feed reader for you and add that feed to your collection.

When feeds start to appear in your aggregator, clicking on the headline will take you to a page with more information.

Further Information

Academic Productivity – http://www.academicproductivity.com/2006/howto-rss-feeds-for-academic-use/

Navigating New Media Frontiers – http://chronicle.com/article/Navigating-New-Media/47962/

Educause Report on RSS – http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ELI7024.pdf