There’s still room in today’s workshop on Current Awareness  Tools.

Here’s the blurb:

Save valuable research time! Online research resources offer an array of tools to help you stay current in your field. In this workshop you’ll learn how to set up email alerts and RSS feeds to:

• be notified when new articles and dissertations are published on your topic
• receive Table of Contents for the latest issue of your favorite journal
• find out when new books in your discipline have arrived in the library
• be notified of funding and upcoming conference opportunities
• follow news stories and blogs

No matter what your discipline, you’ll leave the session having set up a number of alerts to stay up-to-date with your research interests!

Date and Time: Wednesday, March 17th from  11:00am – 12:30pm

Location:  Koerner Library, room 217 (map)

Register here: http://elred.library.ubc.ca/libs/dashboard/view/679

A reminder of an upcoming workshop of interest to MA and PhD students:

Phinished! How to Access Completed Dissertations & Theses

Wondering what a PHinisheD dissertation looks like? We now have access to tens of thousands of dissertations online from universities throughout North America and beyond. Learn to search for dissertations completed at UBC and elsewhere by program, topic or advisor. Then download the full text. We’ll use this guide: FAQ: Dissertations and Theses. And we’ll look at the website www.phinished.org for a bit of practical advice.

Wed 19 Nov 2008
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM
Koerner Library : Room 217
The session is free, but sign up here.

You’ve likely heard about RefWorks, the online citation management tool that allows you to save references for your research paper from online databases such as AnthropologyPlus and Google Scholar, and then formats your paper in the citation style of your choice. Perhaps you’ve had a chance to get started with RefWorks, but need some help in using its many features.

This Wednesday is your chance to find out more! Come to Koerner Library for a RefWorks session from 10:00am-312:00pm.

Workshop is free, but please register here.

Karen Hinton of Proquest will be offering training on the suite of Community of Scholars (COS) research tools the UBC Library, in partnership with the UBC Office of Research Services, has recently acquired on behalf of the UBC community.

When: Tuesday, November 4, 2008; 3:00 – 5:00pm, Koerner Library, Room 217.
Register for the session here.

The COS suite of research databases includes the following:

COS Funding Opportunities, the world’s largest compendium of available funding sources, with more than 25,000 current opportunities for grants, fellowships, and awards

COS Scholar Universe, an editorially controlled, keyword-searchable database with nearly 2 million profiles of scholars.

COS Papers Invited, a database of calls for papers for conferences and journal special editions.

COS Expertise, a profile management system that enables institutions to keep track of their faculty’s expertise and research work, with first-person profiles maintained by the faculty themselves.

You know that lots of journals and magazines are published on the web. But where? This workshop will show you where to look — whether you’re starting with a bibliography, an author’s name, a topic, or just an idea.

Mon 03 Nov 2008
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM
Koerner 216 (Arts Lab)
Workshop is free, but please sign up here.

(photo credit: western4uk via flickr)

This Friday from 10-11:30am, I’ll be doing a session on “Current Awareness Tools in the Arts“.

We’ll be looking at ways to use the research tools offered by our online resources to save yourself some valuable research time and keep-up-to-date. In this workshop you’ll learn how to use current awareness tools to:

– get notified when new articles and dissertations are published on your topic,
– get Table of Contents notifications when the latest issue of your favorite journal is published, and
– set up an RSS Reader for RSS feeds to alert you to new content in blogs, journals, databases, and newspapers.

You can register for the course here: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=6035

If you can’t make the session, we’ll be offering a repeat on Tuesday November 4th from 12:30-2:00 pm. Sign up for the November session here: http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=6036

Both sessions will be held in the Koerner Lab on the second floor of Koerner Library.

Check out other offerings in the Graduate Student Workshop series here:
http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/searchevents.cfm?seriesid=55127194

The new Faculty of Arts Outreach schedule for this term is out. This semester’s workshops are on the theme of intellectual property in a digital environment, and include workshops on Refworks, Google Scholar/Metalib, plus two new workshops: the first on finding and attributing digital images in papers and presentations, and the second on preserving your digital reputation.

For more information, you can download the flyer here, or click the “Continue reading…” link below for descriptions, dates, and locations.
Finding & Using Digital Images
Learn how to find the best images for your presentation or paper and how to cite them.

Monday, January 14, noon – 1:00pm
Friday, February 15, noon – 1:00pm

Your Digital Reputation
Don’t become a headline! Learn how to manage your digital identities so you reflect the image you want – now and in the future.

Monday, January 28 noon – 1:00pm
Monday, February 11 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, March 26 noon – 1:00pm

RefWorks for the Arts
Use RefWorks to format your bibliographies and footnotes automatically!

Thursday, January 24 9:00 – 11:00pm
Tuesday, February 19 2:00 – 4:00pm
Friday, March 7 1:00 – 3:00pm
Please register for one of the Refworks workshops at http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/
description.cfm?sessionid=5194
Location: Koerner Library, Room 217

Google Scholar and Beyond
Go straight to academic articles via Google Scholar; search up to ten article databases at a time with Metalib, and more . . .

Friday, February 1 noon – 1:00pm
Wednesday, Feb. 13 noon – 1:00pm

All sessions in Buchanan B114 , with the exception of RefWorks (Koerner 217).
Sponsored by UBC Library, and supported in part by funding from the Office of the Dean of Arts.

Coming up this week – two workshops on using Google for academic research:

Google Scholar and More
You know that lots of scholarly journals and magazines are published on the web. But where? This workshop will show you where to look for academic articles – whether you’re starting with a bibliography, an author’s name, a topic, or just an idea.

Monday, Nov 5 from 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Buchanan B114

Googling to the Max!
Master Google’s advanced features like searching for synonyms & definitions, combining or excluding search terms, and limiting your search to scholarly information.

Friday, Nov 09 from 12:00 – 1:00 PM
Buchanan B114

Note that both of these sessions are in Buchanan B114 (not in the Koerner lab) as part of the Arts Outreach series. Can’t find Buchanan B? Here’s a map.

You’ve likely heard about RefWorks, the online citation management tool that allows you to save references for your research paper from online databases such as Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts and Google Scholar, and then formats your paper in the citation style of your choice. Perhaps you’ve had a chance to get started with RefWorks, but need some help in using its many features.

Today is your chance to find out more! Come to Koerner Library for a RefWorks session from 1:30-3:30pm.

In this hands-on workshop you will create your own personal database in RefWorks, learn how to add references, and use these references when writing a paper, automatically formatting your footnotes and bibliography in the citation style of your choice.

Register for the session here.

This Thursday, I’ll be teaching a session on tools that you can use to stay up-to-date with research in your field. We’ll look at how you can get the latest Table of Contents for your favourite journals emailed to you, how to get updates on new publications in your area of research, and how to use RSS feeds:

Current Awareness Tools
in the Arts

Thursday, Oct 18, 2:00 – 3:30 pm
Koerner Library : Room 217

Keeping up-to-date in your field of research can be a challenging task. Learn how to set up email alerts or RSS feeds for your favourite databases, journals, or web sites, so that the information comes to you!

Register here:
http://toby.library.ubc.ca/booking/description.cfm?sessionid=4539

(Photo by Sean Durham)