Join us on Monday 27 October, 10am–2pm at the Main Library for Discovery Day, your chance to explore the amazing resources available for your dissertations and theses during our Dissertation and Thesis Festival. Continue reading
Are you developing a search strategy for a systematic review or other evidence synthesis? Here we have collated a list of useful training and guidance resources to help you.
Image by José Miguel from Pixabay
The Learn course LibSmart II: Advance Your Library Research has a whole module on Literature Searching for Systematic Reviews. LibSmart II can be found in Essentials in Learn. If you don’t see it there, contact your Academic Support Librarian and we’ll get you enrolled. You can work through LibSmart at your own pace, and return whenever you need.
For self-paced training on the whole process of conducting a systematic review, Cochrane Interactive Learning has modules created by methods experts so you build your knowledge one step at a time.
If you are a student conducting a systematic review, we can highly recommend the book Doing a Systematic Review (2023). With a friendly, accessible style, the book covers every step of the systematic review process, from planning to dissemination.
We also have several recorded presentations on systematic reviews on our Media Hopper channel, including Building complex searches for systematic reviews and How to test your systematic review searches for quality and relevance as well as introductions to databases like Medline and Web of Science.
For even more advice about systematic review searching, see the library’s subject guides on Systematic reviews
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According to the Cochrane Collaboration, a leading group in the production of evidence synthesis and systematic reviews;
systematic reviews are large syntheses of evidence, which use rigorous and reproducible methods, with a view to minimise bias, to identify all known data on a specific research question.1
This is done by a large, complex literature search in databases and other sources, using multiple search terms and search techniques. This might include Boolean operators, truncation, phrase searches, and database subject headings. Find out more about these search techniques on the Library subject guide to Literature Searching.
Traditional literature reviews, such as the literature review chapter in a dissertation, don’t usually apply the same rigour in their methods because, unlike systematic reviews, they don’t aim to synthesise all known data on a topic. Literature reviews can provide context or background information for a new piece of research, or can stand alone as a general guide to what is already known about a particular topic2.
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You can contact your Academic Support Librarian for advice on literature searching, using databases, and managing the literature you find.
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Welcome, and welcome back, to all students starting the new academic year this week!
Whether you are one of the many descending on campus or one of our online or distance learners logging in from across the globe, we hope you make full use of our library resources, services and facilities while you are at the University.
Main Library
Our newly refreshed Library website has everything you need to know about the Library, while our Library subject guides help you find the resources you may need for your subject area.
But here are 5 things to help you get the best out of our (or your) library in 2024-25. Continue reading
Ruth Jenkins FHEA
We recently celebrated the success of the latest member of the Academic Support Librarian team to gain Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy, Ruth Jenkins. I caught up with colleagues to find out more about what this qualification means to them. Continue reading
Are you a new or exisitng staff member who would like to find out more about the University’s libraries?
Join an Academic Support Librarian on a 20 to 30-minute in-person tour of one of our ten Library sites. Find out about key library services, including EdHelp, borrowing, printing, and study spaces. Discover the general print collections at the Library and explore the subjects covered. Suitable for staff in all roles.
To book a tour, visit Event Booking.
Schedule of library tours:
Main Library
17 January @ 14:00, 22 January @ 09:30, 6 February @ 10:30, 6 March @ 14:00, 2 April @ 10:30, 8 May @ 14:00, 12 June @ 14:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)
Art and Architecture Library
5 March @ 09:15
Edinburgh College of Art Library
18 January @ 09:15, 6 February @ 09:15, 9 April @ 09:15, 7 May @ 09:15, 11 June @ 09:15
Law Library
19 January @ 11:00, 12 February @ 10:00, 21 March @ 11:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)
Moray House Library
25 Jan @ 11:00, 22 Feb @ 11:00, 21 Mar @ 11:00, 25 Apr @ 11:00, 23 May @ 11:00, 20 June @ 11:00
Noreen and Kenneth Murray Library
14 Feb @ 15:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)
New College Library
30 Jan @ 16:00, 27 Feb @ 16:00, 26 Mar @ 16:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)
Royal Infirmary Library
26 Jan @ 10:00, 7 Feb @ 10:00, 26 March @ 09:30 (additional tours to be confirmed)
The Lady Smith of Kelvin Veterinary Library
24 Jan @ 14:00 (additional tours to be confirmed)
Western General Hospital Library
25 Jan @ 10:00, 19 Mar @ 12:30, 22 May @ 13:00
As well as bringing you news and updates from the library, we like to use this blog to report on some of the Continued Professional Development activities we get up to as Academic Librarians. This week several members of our team attended a webinar presented by the Journal of Information Literacy on the topic of Writing about Information Literacy, and we found it to be both useful and inspiring so we thought we’d share some of our key findings.
The session opened with a brief introduction to JIL, who they are and what they do. JIL is the professional journal of the CILIP Information Literacy Group, and if you’ve not encountered them before then they are a well respected publication in UK information literacy:
Founded in 2007, the Journal of Information Literacy (JIL) is an international peer-reviewed journal and is aimed at librarians, information professionals and academics who teach and/or research aspects of information literacy. The journal includes articles from established and new authors that investigate many different areas of information literacy, including school, academic and national libraries, health care settings, and the public sector such as the workplace and government.
A few of our team had previously attended sessions run by Editor-In-Chief Dr Alison Hicks and Managing Editor Dr Meg Westbury at the LILAC conference, so we knew we were in for an hour of useful tips, tricks and key information for submitting to this (but also any) journal.
The presenters addressed different types of submission they might accept in JIL, including Research Articles, Project Reports and Book or Conference Reviews, and briefly described the requirements for each. They looked at the submission process (and why it might feel that it takes so long!) and also suggested how to respond to feedback in a useful and concise way. There were lots of tips about how to stay focused, and a book recommendation for those of us who are worried about the best writing environment:
Sword, H. (2017) Air & light & time & space : how successful academics write / Helen Sword. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
You can find this book at the Main Library, details via DiscoverEd.
Meg also suggested writing Tiny Texts as a way to get started, which you can read more about on the slides which they presented as part of the ‘Getting Your Writing Groove Back’ session from the 2022 LILAC conference.
Overall those of us in the virtual room felt it was a really valuable hour which made academic writing seem accessible and useful to us as library practitioners. Unlike our colleagues in the States, publishing academic work is not a requirement for our jobs here. However we do engage in professional development activities to ensure we’re well informed about new developments particularly across the academic library sector, and reading and contributing to journals is just one of the ways we can do that. While it can seem difficult to make time to write and publish alongside our day jobs, the team at JIL seem to be more than willing to help develop fledgling writers and would be a great port of call for anyone looking to get started in writing about the Information Literacy initiatives in their institution. This session was presented in collaboration with the Information Literacy Group’s New Professionals team, though we would probably say it was useful for anyone considering writing up their work for publication – we certainly found it useful as not-so-new professionals!
If you’re interested in reading and writing more journal articles about library work, why not consider joining the Library Journal Club? We welcome members from any area of Library Services who have an interest in reading and critically discussing publications about libraries. We meet regularly both in person and on Teams, and have a trip to the Library of Mistakes planned for December! You can find us on Teams here.
Here we are midway through the first semester, and you may start to feel like you should be looking ahead to your end of semester assessments. Often students feel a bit overwhelmed before their first hand in, but here at the library we’re keen to help you feel confident from the start. Read on to find out why LibSmart is one of the best ways to prepare for your research and writing….
1. LibSmart shows you the basics of finding information in easy-to-follow lessons
Split into five simple sections, LibSmart I takes you through everything you need to find good material to base your assignments on. You’ll learn about how to search the library catalogue, how to double check your course reading, and suggestions of where to go for follow up resources.
2. You can dip in and out of it any time that suits you
One of the great things about LibSmart is all new students are already enrolled! You just need to log in to learn and click on the ‘Essentials’ tab on the left to find it. It’s there whenever you need it all year long, so if you’re feeling like you need to be productive at 11pm one evening then log on and complete a module. We’re sure you’ll either learn something new or you’ll feel more confident that you’re on the right track.
3. The whole of LibSmart I can take less than one afternoon to work through
We designed LibSmart I so that it’s not a huge effort for you to complete. We know your time is precious and that you may have classes to get to, work shifts to make or social activities that are a huge and important part of your student experience. We wanted to make the information in LibSmart as accessible as possible, and while you can take it at whatever pace you like, we know that some students like to rattle through it in just one day. Whichever route you chose, we appreciate the time you spend there.
4. You’ll learn valuable skills on how to get started with referencing
Referencing is one of the top enquiries we Academic Support Librarians receive – people are confused by it or don’t understand what, where and how to do it properly. LibSmart I has a really useful introductory module that can help you get to grips with the foundations of referencing, and offers top advice on how to find the right style and systems for you. If you’re feeling stuck with where to start then this is the place to go.
5. It’s so much more than just library stuff!
We know it’s a lot to ask students to spend a few hours on looking specifically at library catalogues and databases especially when this isn’t prescribed reading on any particular course. However, students who’ve spent time on LibSmart believe it’s really made a difference to their experience as a student.
When I signed up, I assumed the course was just an introduction to the library but it has really been a guide to how academic research works. I wonder if more people would have signed up for this if they had realised it was not just a tour of the library to see where the books were kept. Along with the one hour “Study Skills” course I did, which was also surprisingly useful in its content, I feel I got as much learning from these free courses as the main one I paid for.
If you’re interested in giving LibSmart a go, you can find out more on our website.
Alternatively if you’re keen to get started straight away, just visit Learn and click on the Essentials tab on the left hand navigation. It’s all there ready for whenever you need it!
We’re very excited to let you know that from this year onwards all students at Undergraduate and Postgraduate level will automatically be enrolled in our LibSmart online information literacy course! If you’ve not encountered LibSmart before, it’s a great way to get to grips with finding and using information available to you via the Library. It’s asychronous which means you can dip in and out whenever suits you across the year, and we tend to find people use it either at the start of term when they need to start looking reading material up, or right before they start research for their assignments.
LibSmart I is our foundation level course, helping students get a good baseline in using our library catalogue, searching for reading materials for courses, and understanding the best places to go for help. We also talk about referencing and plagiarism, something students will need to understand at every level of university life.
LibSmart II is a bit more specialised – it takes a subject-specific look at different topics that people find tricky to work with, such as systematic reviews, data mindfulness and digital news sources. We walk you through different types of resource and processes for working with this information, and hopefully leave you feeling confident of where to start with your assignment or research project. We recommend you complete LibSmart I first, but if you’re feeling confident and ready to dive in to LibSmart II then you’re welcome to start wherever you like!
And if the achievement of completing a module alone doesn’t bring you joy, we also award you some lovely digital badges for each module you complete. You can save them and use them as evidence of the self-directed learning you’ve completed via LibSmart – something that could look very attractive to future employers!
Earn digital badges for every module you complete in LibSmart I and II.
To access LibSmart, simply follow these steps:
If you would like some further information on LibSmart you can find out more on our LibSmart webpage which includes information about the modules available and a look at what previous students have found most useful about the course. Of course if you have any questions please leave us a comment or email us.
I attended the CALC Conference on 24th and 25th May and can thoroughly recommend this annual event to other professionals interested in critical librarianship. The gathering was welcoming and introduced the day by stating “we will operate within a spirit of liberation at this conference”. If you have not heard of CALC before, their website states that “The Critical Approaches to Libraries Conference aims to provide a space to discuss all aspects of critical practice in libraries and librarianship including (but not limited to) decolonisation, critical pedagogy, equality, diversity and inclusion in library work and the representation of marginalised groups in the workforce, academia and literature.”
The 2 day conference was packed with a diverse range of topics and speakers, so I can only highlight a few here. At the end of the blog post I have included links to further reading.
Some of my key take-aways were:
In the Day 1 conference Keynote: Decolonising bibliographies, referencing and citational practices Dr Gurnam Singh shared so many important reflections for where we find ourselves right now, such as:
Dr Singh discussed the various types of colonisation to be aware of such as settler colonisation, extractive colonisation, and plantation colonisation.
(Colonialism is generally classified by one of five overlapping types according to the practice’s particular goals and consequences on the subjugated territory and its indigenous peoples. These are: settler colonialism; exploitation colonialism; plantation colonialism; surrogate colonialism; and internal colonialism.)
Dr Singh then went on to compare the fixed hierarchies of arborescent thought versus rhizomatic thought’s interconnected multiplicity and networks of thought, which rejects fixed categories and sees connections and dialogues.
Some of his comments might be challenging to some people, such as “Citation rankings are monetised and racist, and so therefore is the REF [Research Excellence Framework]”. It is true that currently citation rankings perpetuate certain dominant authors and global voices, which position Western discourse as the most “valid” or important. Dr Singh said “When an article has 10 authors you just know its gaming the citation rankings – its fraud. The publishing industry is colonial – it’s based on colonial attitudes.”
“Decoloniality is about building a new humanity not going back to a “purer” time. This isn’t a specialist subject, its about being human. Maybe AI could release us to be humans and not robots?”
Other topics covered by other speakers included multilingualism in public libraries; using reflective practices to extend the impact of teaching in libraries; developing collaborative cataloguing codes of ethics; setting up Library Decol Working Groups in academic libraries; exploring working class roots of library staff and their experiences in the mostly middle class populations of HE library staff; being a neurodivergent librarian in HE; using critical race theory in medical curriculum decolonisation work; and using the Homosaurus for cataloguing in a public library consortium.
We were encouraged to develop the attitude that everybody brings something to the workplace – a richness of their own, rather than making assumptions about the limitations of people based on their assumed backgrounds, identities, or experiences of “othering”.
I can thoroughly recommend attending this very affordable and welcoming conference!
Jane Furness
ECA Academic Support Librarian
The recordings of the sessions will soon be uploaded to the CALC Conference site:
https://sites.google.com/view/calcconference
If you are interested in the topics raised at the Conference these links will be useful to explore:
Future Learn course on Anti Racist Technologies https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/anti-racist-technologies
Cataloguing code of ethics:
https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/library/support-for-staff/collection-development-policy/cataloguing-code-of-ethics/
https://sites.google.com/view/cataloging-ethics/home
https://homosaurus.org/
Journal of Information Literacy article on working class library staff experiences: https://journals.cilip.org.uk/jil/article/view/20
Critical Race Theory book: Knowledge Justice (on DiscoverEd):
https://discovered.ed.ac.uk/permalink/44UOE_INST/7g3mt6/alma9924550010502466
Critical Race Theory definition:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/critical-race-theory
CRT awareness: https://www.uksg.org/newsletter/uksg-enews-534/navigating-whiteness-and-reflecting-identity-vocational-awe-and-allyship
Neurodivergent librarians supporting each other: https://neurospicylibraries.flarum.cloud/
One neurodivergent librarian’s experience: https://www.inthelibrarywiththeleadpipe.org/2017/neurodiversity-in-the-library/
CALC conference on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqB_9b3mgcJ0yu8cHK9kIoQ
As we’re midway through the second semester, many eyes are turning to assignments and thinking ahead to final exams. Did you know that we’ve recently secured a trial of the interactive resource Skills for Study?
Based on the bestselling The Study Skills Handbook by Stella Cottrell, Skills for Study offers an interactive and personalised solution to help students hone their academic skills while developing skills required by employers:
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Each of the modules comes complete with exercises, activities, and module assessments along with supplementary videos, articles and blogs. We know how popular the Study Skills Handbook is for students from a range of disciplines, so here’s how to access this interactive resource:
That’s it, it’s that easy! More information about the trial is available on the E-Resources trials page. Our trial ends on the 24th April so have a good look before then, and if you want to offer any comments on this or any of our other E-Resource trials then please consider filling in the trial feedback form.
