Library 101: your guide to find resources in person and online

So we're a few weeks into term, you're settling in, and you're wondering about how the library works and where to find things. Here's a guide to kick-start your studies.

What are the different library buildings for on Campus West?

We have three Library buildings all joined together - you enter through the Morrell, which contains most of the books, then turn right to go to the Burton and left for the Fairhurst. Between them they contain a variety of study spaces for different purposes (for example group work, or silent study) and a huge amount of books, journals, AV equipment, PCs and so on. Here's a video which tells you more about what goes where:

Are there any other Library sites I can use?

There are two University libraries in the heart of York which you can study in, and borrow items from: King's Manor Library, and the Minster Library. They're both in beautiful buildings. Here's the beautiful Minster Library:

A post shared by Uni of York Library & Archives (@uoylibrary) on Jul 21, 2017 at 6:40am PDT

You can find more information including opening hours on our Locations webpage.

I want to find books and journals 

Our catalogue, called YorSearch, will search our collections for you - it will tell you what we have, whether it's electronic or physically available in the Library, and where to find it. Check out this guide to YorSearch, which includes info on the book reservation system.

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

What about databases, where do I find them?

Databases are essential for academic work - they contain collections of high quality articles, reports, data, newspapers and more, which Google can't get to. You'll find them either via our E-resources Guide, where you can search by category or Department, or on our Subject Guides. The Library Subject Guides are curated collections of useful resources for your studies, alongside useful information on how to evaluate and organise sources.

Can I book study spaces in the Library?

There are more than 1200 study spaces in the Library but it still fills up during peak times. You can book single, group or accessible study rooms online here.

What else can I expect from the Library & IT?

Glad you asked. Here's a video which tells you a lot more about what we can provide.

I want to talk to someone about how to use resources... 

There are all sorts of ways to get help with Library services and resources. You can visit the Help Desk, which is staffed from 9am - 7pm on weekdays and 10am - 6pm at weekends. You can use the Library chat service online at any time, day or night. There's some FAQ with the chance to ask your own questions too, via LibAnswers. If you need to alert us to a problem with behaviour or building matters, you can text us on 07919 293133.

When it comes to using resources, it's worth checking out our Skills Guides. These contain useful info and interactive tutorials to improve your digital skills, and details of our training sessions. And you can always speak to your Academic Liaison Librarian, whose contact details you'll find on the Subject Guide for your Department. Here's a brief video about how Academic Liaison can help you.

So best of luck in your studies, and if you need any help from us, please just get in touch.

Ned Potter is part of the Academic Liaison Team 

#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!

How do you solve a problem like literature searching? Adding professional value to academic skills development.

David Brown discusses how to ensure that professionals in training have the chance to develop academic study skills.

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What's the point of developing study skills? For some the answer to that question will be very clear (whatever their feelings), but for many students this presents a difficult challenge. This is especially the case for students on professional programmes, where their ultimate goal is registration for a specific career path. Academic skills can therefore seem like simply a means to an end, rather than in themselves proving professionally beneficial.

This is despite the fact that some professional bodies explicitly expect students to develop exactly those skills during their degree. The Nursing and Midwifery Council's Code for Nurses and Midwives, for example, obliges new registrants to maintain robust and effective literature searching skills in order to "practise in line with the best available evidence". The challenge for practitioners and teachers of study skills is therefore to create a link for students between the academic environment of the university and their end goal of professional registration. How do we demonstrate the relevance and transferability of traditionally academic skills? How do we encourage students to view academic skills as a means to strengthen, rather than distract from, professional skills? This post will explore some of my recent work with students on the BSc Nursing programme in Health Sciences to address these issues.

What was the problem?

Health Sciences students are expected to engage with a range of academic skills from an early stage in their programme. Literature searching in particular is a prominent area of attention, especially so given the discipline's focus on evidence-based practice and the inherent need to find and use literature of sufficient quality and academic rigour. This focus means that students will often be expected to develop skills and knowledge of literature searching very quickly, and likely very much sooner than their peers on other programmes.

On the BSc Nursing programme, students receive a range of guidance on literature searching specifically (and digital literacy more broadly) across the three years of the degree. The first of these classes takes place in a first-term module in year 1: Co-operative Learning Group (CLG) 1. CLG modules are designed to provide an open and inclusive environment for discussion and collaboration; students are allocated into groups which follow through the whole programme. The session is designed as an introduction to basic principles of effective searching, and previously included a range of procedural activities related to searching. It did not, however, tackle the broader professional context or sufficiently explain to students why literature searching was such a key focus of the degree. It was also an issue that students were being asked to focus on relatively basic skills, despite this session being timetabled several weeks into the programme when they arguably should have covered many of those skills already.

What did I do to address it?

In October 2015 the session was changed to adopt a flipped-classroom method. Students were asked to complete exercises and read content in advance through the Health Sciences Subject Guide, including an online activity to search YorSearch, the Library catalogue. This left more time in class for group discussion and active learning activities, which was much more closely aligned to the format of the CLG modules in general.

In the classroom activities, students were asked to watch the video below about the importance of literature searching in a professional context, then to comment on scenarios where literature might be used to inform and add value to interactions with patients.

The aim of these activities was to situate literature searching as holding direct value, both for the students as practitioners and the patients under their care. Literature searching therefore becomes a core skill for the students, rather than an optional, overtly academic extra - at least that was my hope!

There was also time in the session for students to explore relevant online resources and to develop basic literature searching skills, in support of their assignments for upcoming modules.

What was the outcome?

Initial feedback from the students and their interest in class suggests that the session's new approach was broadly successful. The true test will be in how students develop their literature searching skills through the rest of the programme. Subsequent sessions in year 1 and beyond are designed to become gradually more complex, with the intention that students have a solid contextual grounding from this first session. In practice it is often in year 3 of the programme that students truly see the need for advanced literature searching skills, when they have to work on a longer project and evidence their searching methodology.

The success of this session could well be replicated across other programmes, especially those with an overt link to specific career paths or where skills development is mandated by a professional body. Disciplines such as Social Work and Law could therefore benefit from a more contextualised approach to academic skills.

How do you solve a problem like literature searching? The answer, at least in my experience, is to make it relevant to students. Skills with a purely academic end will only ever appeal to a limited group of students, but by emphasising how academic development also aids employability and personal development, we can gradually reach a wider audience and create truly skilled professionals, whatever their discipline.

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.

ScienceDirect

Academic Liaison Librarian for Chemistry, Computer Science, Electronics and Physics, Clare Ackerley, provides some tips on how to get the most out of this resource.

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ScienceDirect is a full-text database that provides access to over 2,500 journals and over 30,000 books. In addition to Physical Sciences, Life Sciences and Health Sciences, ScienceDirect has coverage of Social Sciences and Humanities, including History, Education and Linguistics and Language.

Here are some tips on using the ScienceDirect database:

1. Register online

Registering online, allows you to save your searches, set up alerts and view your search history. Simply follow the 'Sign in' option on the top right-hand side of the screen.

Tip: If you have already registered with Scopus, you can use the same login.

2. Select Advanced Search

Using the Advanced Search option will ensure you get relevant, rich results.

There are different search forms for different resources, including journals, books and images. You could use the image search form if you are specifically looking for photos, figures or tables for example.

3. Explore mobile device article

ScienceDirect recently launched their mobile device article which makes navigating and reading the full text on a small screen much easier.

The search bar is at the top of the screen while other options such as article navigation, exporting and PDF are at the bottom.

4. Manage your references

ScienceDirect is available to University of York users via the E-resources Guide, or you can explore other useful resources for your subject on your department’s Subject Guide. ScienceDirect can be used with EndNote Online to help you collect and manage your references - more information is available on our Reference Management site.

5. Ask for help if you need it!

There is a handy Quick Reference Guide to ScienceDirect and also some great online tutorials. And if all that isn’t enough, you can follow them on Twitter or keep up to date with the ScienceDirect Blog.

For more advice about using electronic resources and for general advice about Library resources for your department contact your Academic Liaison Librarian (you can find their contact details on the Subject Guide for your department).

Go beyond your Resource Lists with Oxford Bibliographies Online!

David Brown, one of our team of Academic Liaison Librarians, introduces you to one of the many e-resources that we provide to support your work.

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Your Resource Lists are a great starting point when you're looking for materials for assignments, but if you really want to impress your tutors you'll need to find lots of other sources too. Oxford Bibliographies Online (OBO) is just one of the Library's online resources which can help you to expand your search and go beyond your Resource List.

What is OBO?

OBO provides research guides, written by experts in the subject. Each guide breaks down the topic into key headings, which include suggested reading and links to more material. Think of each guide on OBO as a subject-specific Resource List, giving you an idea about the key books, journal articles and other resources for that topic.

At York, we have access to five different sections on OBO:

• Criminology
• Linguistics
• Philosophy
• Psychology
• Social Work

How can I find material on OBO?

Each subject area on OBO is broken down into research guides, covering the main topics for that subject. You can browse each subject by using the links at the top of the screen, or search for topics of interest by using the search box at the top-right. The Advanced Search gives you more options - for example, you can choose which subject areas to include in your search.

You will also find OBO's research guides listed on YorSearch, our Library catalogue. YorSearch will give you a direct link to each entry on OBO, making it easy to find the research guide you're looking for.

How do I use OBO's research guides?

The research guides usually start with an introduction, giving you a broad overview of the subject, followed by more specific areas of interest. Each section of the guide includes suggested readings, with notes under each reference to explain why that source might be useful.

To find out whether a resource is available from the Library, click on Find this resource under each reference. The Find it @ York button will automatically check YorSearch to see whether that book or journal article is available. YorSearch will tell you whether the item is available electronically (and give you a link) or in print.

Remember that we won't necessarily have access to everything listed on OBO, as it might not have been chosen specifically by our academics. If you think we should have access to an item you'd like to use, why not suggest it to the Academic Liaison Librarian for your department? You can find his or her contact details on your department's Subject Guide.

How can I get more help?

For help using OBO, you could either explore the database's Help pages, or contact your Liaison Librarian for more advice.

Your department's Subject Guide will include links to lots of other useful resources for your subject, and will provide general advice on Library resources for your department.