Box of Broadcasts is here! Three things to try out with our new film, TV and radio resource

Ned Potter suggests a few ways to use an exciting new resource.

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We've added a new subscription to our library collections, and we're delighted by it: say hello to Box of Broadcasts. Known as BoB, this is a service which records free-to-air broadcasts from 65 TV and radio channels (see the full list here), and makes the programmes and films discoverable for educational purposes online. You can watch any of the 2 million+ programmes it contains, dating back to the 90s, on any device, anywhere in the UK.

We've put together a Frequently Asked Questions page, which goes into a bit more detail about how to use it and what it does. But for this blogpost we want to explore some amazing things you can do with BoB.

1. Make playlists 

BoB isn't just a giant vat of films and programmes - it allows you to curate the material to your own ends. So for example we've created a playlist to compare great movie trilogies:

You can check out the trilogies playlist here if you like. You can create your own too, perhaps adding in some more trilogies that BoB has on it (Bourne, Jurassic Park, er, Austin Powers, for example...) - just find any broadcast and click 'Add to playlist'. 

If you need to watch a bunch of films or shows for a particular module, just create a playlist to keep them in one easy to find place. Or if you're the academic running the module, create the playlist and just share the URL with your class, or put each programme on your Resource List for the students to find. 

2. Search programme transcripts 

By default, BoB's search will be looking for your keywords not just in programme titles but in their transcripts. (It's worth going into Search Settings and changing it to 'Title Only' for times when you don't want this to happen.) This opens up a whole new way of studying television and radio, allowing you to keyword-search in an amazing way.

So for example if you type in "Werner Herzog" then of course you get the legendary director's films (including Cave of Forgotten Dreams which some have nominated as the greatest documentary of all time) and his TV documentaries, but you also get TV interviews with him and radio interviews with him, you get films he's acted in like Jack Reacher, you get Alan Yentob's Imagine special on him, you get episodes of Mastermind where he's the specialist subject, you get the time on University Challenge where he was the answer to a question that no one got right, you get the episode of The Simpsons in which he guest starred...  

This ability to search programme transcripts is the equivalent of full-text searching but for multimedia, and surely opens up whole new avenues of scholarship. 

3. Create your own clips 

It is ridiculously easy to create a clip - you just press the button and drag sliders into place to cover the part of the programme you want. 

One of the interesting things about watching programmes on BoB is those on commercial channels have adverts on. Of course you can just skip through them, but if part of your dissertation involves studying advertising or brands, you can create clips of period adverts that are no longer shown. Then you can collect them together in one place, and share them with other BoB users if you wish, or embed them in the VLE or even embed then in a PowerPoint presentation. Head to the BUFVC's site for video tutorials on how to do all these things.  

So, what will you do with Box of Broadcasts? How will it change the way you study at York? 

#UoYTips: Five resources to get you started at York

Ned Potter shares a few tips for new students

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Welcome to the University of York! It's great to have you here. We hope you're settling in.

There's a lot to take in in the first few weeks, so we wanted to strip things down to the essentials for this blogpost. Here's five resources to get you started:

1) An interactive map of the library. We've created a map of the Library in Prezi, which will take you on a guided tour of our three main buildings. Just click the 'Start Prezi' box below - you can either navigate through the tour using the arrows, or skip straight to a part of the library you're interested in by clicking on it.

 

2) YorSearch, the library catalogue. You'll be needing books, articles and other materials depending on what degree you're studying. There's a number of ways to get these, starting with the search tool YorSearch which tells you what we have in stock at the Library, as well as linking to hundreds of thousands of online resources. You can find YorSearch on special catalogue PCs around the Morrell Library, or you can go straight to yorsearch.york.ac.uk from any device, put in your keywords and see what we have.

Embedded below are some UoYTips on finding what you need and getting the most out of the system:

Finding what you need with YorSearch: #UoYTips from University of York Library

You may also be directed to resources from the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment), via Resource Lists put together by your lecturers which link out to YorSearch and other useful sources.

3) The Subject Guide. Every Department has a Subject Guide. It's a curated collection of information and resources for your subject. Choose your Department from this menu and see what we have that can help you study.

 There are many advantages to using the resources on the Subject Guide. There are often huge collections of online journals or books which you can search all at once with keywords. All the resources are high quality academic sources, the majority of which Google won't be able to find because they're behind a paywall. And we, the Library, have paid to get you through that paywall so you don't have to - just make sure you find the journals and databases via the links on our site, so they ask you to log in with your IT username and password and you get the full access entitled to you as a student at York.

4) The YouTube channel. We have a LOT of useful videos about the Library, IT and Archives on YouTube. But we don't want you to be overwhelmed, so we've created a UoYTips playlist with 6 key videos to start off with: New students start here!

Here's the first video on the playlist, outlining what you can expect at York.



5) The New Students webpage. We've put together a little to-do list on our page aimed at new starters over on the main library website.  Have you written on the walls at the top of the Fairhurst yet?

The final tip on that page is to search for more #UoYTips online. You'll find guidance and advice on the website, on Twitter, on Facebook, on Instagram, as well as YouTube and Slideshare as mentioned above. We've also created a special Subject Guide to pull together all the resources we've made - open the UoYTips Subject Guide now and take a look!

We hope you can find useful tips on just about everything, and we'd really like you to add your own across social media. If you've found something that has helped you, let your peers know about it too... Just use the hashtag #UoYTips so others can find it.

Good luck with your first term. If you need help, just ask!

The Academic Liaison Team would like to save you time…

Ned Potter explains how Academic Liaison Librarians can help you to find the resources you need.

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There was some interesting work done at the University of Huddersfield a couple of years ago, which showed that students who used the library the most got the best degrees. I'll leave it up to you to speculate whether this was because those types of students were always going to do well anyway, or because the library helped them improve their grades - but certainly with a lot of the work we do across Information Services we aim to help you get better marks.

In the Academic Liaison Team we serve a few roles. For the students, we want to help you up your grade, or just save you some time (both would be ideal, but let's not get ahead of ourselves). For the staff, we try and be a conduit for information between the department and Information Services, and to keep up an ongoing dialogue around making what we do as relevant as possible to everyone. It's not always easy to understand exactly what Academic Liaison does, so we made a video to try and explain it. If you can spare 1 minute 25 seconds, have a look:

As it says at the end of the video, the Subject Guides homepage has more information. We'll write a blog post about those in more detail soon, but the short version is this: each Department has an Academic Liaison Librarian, often known as an ALL for short, and each ALL prepares a Subject Guide for their Department, detailing the most pertinent and useful information about what we have to help you study. We spend millions of pounds each year on electronic resources so that they're free to you at the point of access, and finding them via our Subject Guides (or YorSearch) ensures you get everything you're entitled to. This is good quality academic information, which Google either can't find at all, or can only find when you're on campus (and even that's because we've already got you through the paywall).

If I'm the Academic Liaison Librarian for your Department, you'll have seen me as part of your Induction, giving a brief talk to outline how the library works and what its benefits are to you. I'll probably have taught at least one workshop on your degree, about finding and accessing information, among other related topics. I may turn up in your Department a few times each term, either to run drop-in sessions or to attend Departmental meetings like Board of Studies. And I may have seen some of you for one-to-one research consultations, where we went into more detail about how to find and evaluate sources for your assignments. You can always email your ALL, either via the addresses on each Subject Guide, or just email lib-enquiry@york.ac.uk and they'll pass your query on to the relevant one of us. We're happy to hear from you, and can schedule an appointment if need be or just talk things over via phone or email.

Our aim is to point you in the right direction to find materials you can cite with confidence – the kinds of things which will get you better grades. We want to help broaden your search if you're not finding enough, or focus it in if you’re bringing back Too Much Information, and help you evaluate what you find. We can show you what to look for in terms of credibility and authority when using sources you've found via Google, or give you alternatives if you'd rather steer clear of search engines. We hope we can save you a bit of time searching, so you can spend more time finding. We can also assist in choosing IT tools for your academic study, and help you organise your references.
If Academic Liaison can make things easier, or quicker, or better, or more comprehensive, we will. So start by visiting the Subject Guide for your Department, and get in touch with us any time you'd like our help.

Finding past exam papers, Masters dissertations, and theses

Academic Liaison Librarian Ned Potter explains how to access exam paper, dissertations and theses.

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It can be extremely useful to go over past exam papers so you know what to expect, or to see examples of best practice when writing your dissertation or thesis. Happily, the Library has plenty of examples for you to look at.

Finding exam papers and Masters dissertations

York Digital Library is our own online repository for multimedia resources including images, past exam papers and Masters theses. A key thing to note about the Digital Library is that it is possible to follow the link above and search it without logging in - however, unless you log in with your York username and password it won't show you everything you're entitled to see. So use the log-in button in the top right hand corner before you start.

• York Digital Library

Once logged in, click Browse. Choose University of York dissertations and exam papers (Login Required). You'll see a folder for Exam Papers, and a folder for Masters Theses (plus one for Undergraduate Projects and Essays - this has a selection of items from Economics, Health Sciences, History and History of Art). In the Exam Papers folder you'll find all the examples which have been released to the Library, from 25 Departments.

In the Masters Theses folder you'll find the following eleven departments:

(We're currently negotiating with Departments to add more, so this list should grow shortly.)

Once you've chosen the relevant subject area, the dissertations are arranged in collections by year. When you find the paper you're interested in, click the Download button to save it as a PDF to print or read on-screen.

Finding PhD theses

If you want to see examples of PhD theses from York students, we have a lot of recent examples in YorSearch. For example, at the time of writing there are 468 English literature theses available, of which 94 have online versions.

• English Literature theses search 

If you want to find theses from your own department, just follow the link above and replace the word 'English' that appears in the search box, with the subject that you're interested in.

Visit our website to find out more about consulting theses:

• Theses and dissertations

You can also potentially find theses from other institutions: White Rose Etheses Online holds electronic doctoral level theses from the Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York, and  EThOS (the British Library's online theses service) has PhD theses from most British higher education libraries made freely available in PDF format.

• White Rose Etheses Online
• EThOS

If you have any questions about getting hold of theses, dissertations or exam papers, let us know and we'll be happy to help - email lib-enquiry@york.ac.uk.

JSTOR is amazing

Academic Liaison Librarian, Ned Potter, explains how JSTOR can help you improve your research, essays and grades.

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JSTOR is a massive collection of online journals and books, which you can access via the E-resources guide. It is full of literally millions of high quality academic articles (which Google can’t find!) for you to read there and then, and use in your research and cite in essays and reports. JSTOR is amazing. Not only can this resource save you time, but it can help make your grades better. You can access it from anywhere in the world that you have an internet connection, including on your mobile, and as you can see, it covers many academic disciplines:

How to find what you need on JSTOR

As well as appearing on the E-resources guide, you may also see links to JSTOR on your Department’s Subject Guide. Accessing the resource in either of these ways ensures it knows you are from York, and so gives you the access you are entitled to. (The library has paid for access to JSTOR on your behalf, so don’t go direct to jstor.org or it may try and charge you for access to something you’re eligible to use for free.)

When you search JSTOR it will default to only display ‘Content I can access’. You may wish to occasionally press the ‘All content’ button below the search box to see what else is on there, but as long as you’re in the ‘Content I can access’ mode you should be able to read in full text the articles and books you find. You can read on screen, or save the PDF to view later, or print things out.

When you run a search on JSTOR it searches throughout the full text. So when you type in something like ‘20th century film’ it isn’t just searching the titles and descriptions of the articles and chapters, it’s searching within them as well. This allows you to find really specific sections to cite and reference in your work – but it also means you’ll bring back a LOT of results for most searches you do. In order to reduce the number to a more manageable amount, use the Advanced Search. (In fact, as a rule of thumb, it’s always worth using the Advanced Search with the databases the library subscribes to.)

This allows you to layer your search terms, meaning you spend less time searching and more time finding because you tell JSTOR your very specific requirements. You can also limit your search to just articles, or just publications from the time period of your choosing. For the most efficient search, keep the box to ‘Include only content I can access’ ticked, but untick the ‘Include links to external content’ box – this will guarantee you have access to the full text of everything you find.

Using MyJSTOR

Finally, even though you have access to JSTOR as a result of your being at the University of York, you can also set up your own (free) account within the database. This is known as MyJSTOR and can be found on the navigation bar which stays at the top of the screen as you search and browse. MyJSTOR will allow you to save your searches, email and export your references, and even receive email alerts when a new article is added which matches your criteria.  It’s well worth using, and more info on how to sign up can be found online.

Any questions about how this resource works, let us know in the comments or get in touch with your Academic Liaison Librarian.

Four rules for creating effective (and beautiful) PowerPoint Presentations

How good are your presentation and PowerPoint skills? Academic Liaison Librarian Ned Potter shares some hints and tips on how to make yours pitch perfect.

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Creating and delivering presentations well is an increasingly key skill, both while you're at University and afterwards. You may have to present in seminars, and you may have presentations involved in your assessment - and many job interviews now have a presenting element.

With that in mind, it's useful to know what works and what doesn't in terms of creating an effective set of slides. Engaging slides make a huge difference in how much the audience remembers from your talk, and how responsive they are during it. Yet most PowerPoint presentations are awful.

This is easy to address when you know what matters and where all the useful resources are. One of our Academic Liaison Librarians has created this guide to the four most important rules for creating effective presentations, to help you out – check it out below:

The 4 Most Important PowerPoint RULES for Successful Presentations from Ned Potter

Twitter and blogging for researchers

(Reblogged from our Digital Scholarship Blog)

The Library works with the Researcher Development Team here at York, to deliver training on the aspects of Web 2.0 that impact on academia most. There's a whole suite of workshops around the idea of becoming a networked researcher - Russ Grant in RDT runs an introduction to social media, a session on enhancing your online reputation, and one on social networks for researchers (eg ResearchGate, Academia.edu, and LinkedIn). I run the sessions on Blogs and Blogging, and Twitter.

Here are the slides from my sessions this term (the handouts we used are linked to at the relevant point in the slides):

Twitter for Researchers from University of York Library

(If you're interested in the teaching side of using Twitter, see our previous blog post on the subject!)

Blogs and Blogging: Becoming a Networked Researcher from University of York Library

If you're interested in these, we're running the whole suite again next term - all the details are available via the Support for Researchers webpages:

In case you're still not sold, here are some comments from this term's feedback forms:

• Great. Ready to conquer the blogging world! Thanks
• Excellent session, well presented and very friendly. 
• I finally understand what Twitter is, well done Ned! 
• Totally recommended 
• It saved me so much time, since I now know exactly the options I'm interested in… THANKS!

Hope to see some of you next term!

Ned Potter,
Academic Liaison Librarian