Creating Postgraduate Collaborations › Forums › CPC Supervision Development Course › Module 2 › Module 2, Session 1: Library resources and support
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1. What relationship do you and your students have with the library? Not much
2. What kinds of library support services are there for your postgraduate students? They provide training for library search and referencing software among other things I may not be aware of.
3. How do you access your own library’s holdings? I go there physically
4. How do you keep up with the latest research in your field? I look for material on google and also subscribe to some journal and professional bodies like the APA
5. What online databases does your institution use? Not sure about this.
6. Which referencing software does your institution provide? I know of Endnote, Zotero, and Mandeley which they have trained us in, but have not used them personally.
7. What are the procedures that you need to follow to use your institution’s interlibrary loan system? I don’t know!
8. What referencing and style guides are available to you online at your institution? The use of APA manual
9. What is an open access site? Site that you can get material free without subscribing to.
10. Do you know how to create a search alert? No.
From answering this questions, I have come to realise that there is a lot about library resources and support that I am not aware of, it could be that my institution’s library provides but I am not aware of. I therefore need to be in touch with the library as it could be that magical key that I need.
Our library offers most of the resources listed and provides extensive training and consultation opportunities, particularly training all students on RefWorks and basic literature searches. There has also been a push toward open-access publishing in The Netherlands.
However, I think the issue is that students can arrive from such information-deficient environments that they really don’t know where to begin or recognise what questions they need to be asking in order to find what they need.
We also have the problem that a previous library director was not in fact a librarian but a data cruncher who seemed to be working to eliminate the library completely, assuming that online content was sufficient, and that eventually everything would be digital. So, despite faculty objections, he started throwing out stacks and stacks of accumulated books and journals, even before establishing whether they were available digitally. A lot of information was lost to the library as a result. He also overhauled the library’s acquisition system so that, rather than categorising books according to topic, books are stacked on library shelves in the approximate order that they were received and added to the collection. This has eliminated all possibility of the kinds of discovery by proximity that usually happen in a library with, e.g. the Dewey decimal system. This has made it harder for students to ‘discover’ content on their topics by browsing the stacks.
The lesson is that while there are advantages with digital content, in terms of costs and remote accessibility, there are also disadvantages, and we shouldn’t assume that just because everything is digital these days, students will even know where to find it, automatically have access–or, more importantly, how to vet its quality. Moreover, harking back to the discussions of Module 1, the push toward digital content can be exclusionary–not only for people located in some parts of the world where access is limited but also for people with different abilities and learning styles, for whom learning from digital content is more challenging. For example, there have been studies that show that people retain less of what they read from digital content than from print, because quite different things go on in the brain when reading from a screen than from the page. Similarly, people who take notes on paper absorb more content than those who take notes on a laptop/tablet. These are also things we need to take into account in our pedagogy.Our library is well equipped and stocked with relevant books and other reading materials for all the programs on offer.
The library is well catalogued in line with subjects. The librarian makes requisitions in consultation with faculty.Thus,library has current reading materials.
To augment hard copies,the library is subscribed to e-books. These are accessible to both students and faculty.The collections are regularly updated.
In overall,there is sufficient support to students and faculty from the library.I think that for most students and possibly supervisors, the role of the library remains a place to get books…literally. Most of us (including the library at my institution)still do not appreciate the wider scope of activities that the library plays in research. This perception in my opinion has limited what would otherwise be a very vibrant relationship between the library and the other two arms of research mentioned at the beginning of the session.Consequently, most of us are unaware of some of the things that the library may already offer and that might make the postgraduate research easier.
I genuinely feel that the library at my institution needs to reinvent and rebrand itself so that it does not become obsolete.Researchers on the other hand also need to make more effort to make their needs known to the library to enable this happen.
Lots of course participants have written very positively about the support available from the library at their university, with with Anna & Damiannah, for example, noting electronic resources in particular. Christopher raises the important point that many students and scholars are not fully aware of all the support and resources their institutional libraries offer – a point emphasised by Rox.
For me, though, the point raised by Susan about plagiarism (especially in relation to electronic resources) is particularly interesting. Frea responds to this by saying that, in her experience, a lot of plagiarism is not intentional – something I also experienced when I used to chair Rhodes University’s Senate Committee on Plagiarism and saw many postgraduate students appearing before it.
I believe that one of the most important things supervisors can teach their students is about their relationship with the literature, whatever form it takes. At undergraduate level, students are often required to summarise the literature, to demonstrate that they ‘know’ the facts, theories and so on. I don’t support this as a practice (and could write a lot more about this) but the point is that, as a result, many students come to postgraduate work with the understanding that this is what they need to continue doing.
In postgraduate work, we look for more than summaries of the literature. We expect students to be able to use the literature to argue, to make a case. One of the things I try to teach my students is that the thesis is a series of ‘knowledge claims’ (statements about what they believe to be true) each of which is supported by evidence. In an empirical study, the later sections of the thesis, the evidence comes from the data. In the early stages (the so called ‘literature review’ and, also, in the social sciences, the methodology section), the evidence comes from the literature. This means that references are the evidence for what writers believe to be the case.
If students get this point, their entire relationship to what they read shifts. They are not ‘summarisers’ but writers who need to take a position, build an argument of a series of knowledge claims each of which is supported by the literature.
I have found explaining this to be really useful when I work with my postgraduate students.
The ppt presentation has enlighten me on the relationship between the student, supervisor and library (whether online or offline). It is important for a supervisors to understand students background. This was key for me because I had not been keen to realise that students come from different institutions, culture and work background, therefore have different ways of doing things and synthesising information.
The presentation has also made me realise that there is a lot of institutional and alternative support for me as a supervisor and also for my students. Sadly, I was not aware of some of the support such as the online guides for information skills, alternatives to institutional support, softwares for reference and data management.
In addition, the presentation has awakened me to a realisation that i could use online communication like twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Academia.com among others to have an online academic presence.
Therefore, this piece will not only benefit my students but I first so that I can in turn help my students to “know when and why they need information, where to find it and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”.
The ppt presentation has enlighten me on the relationship between the student, supervisor and library (whether online or offline). It is important for a supervisors to understand students background. This was key for me because I had not been keen to realise that students come from different institutions, culture and work background, therefore have different ways of doing things and synthesising information.
The presentation has also made me realise that there is a lot of institutional and alternative support for me as a supervisor and also for my students. Sadly, I was not aware of some of the support such as the online guides for information skills, alternatives to institutional support, softwares for reference and data management.
In addition, the presentation has awakened me to a realisation that i could use online communication like twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Academia.com among others to have an online academic presence.
Therefore, this piece will not only benefit my students but I first so that I can in turn help my students to “know when and why they need information, where to find it and how to evaluate, use and communicate it in an ethical manner”.
What relationship do you and your students have with the library? May not be very active because we now have quite a number of alternative online sources where we can obtain materials but once in a while I do access the university library’s online portal to access e-books and journals.
What kinds of library support services are there for your postgraduate students? Provide details. I’m not very sure of this but there are online databases that students can access
How do you access your own library’s holdings? Online access both within the university LAN and remote access outside the LAN is also available
How do you keep up with the latest research in your field? Through searching online sources mostly e.g. Google scholar
What online databases does your institution use? quite a long list including EBSCO, AJOL, ERIC and others
Which referencing software does your institution provide? (For example: Endnote, Refworks, Zotero, Mandeley and Paperpile). None, but we are encouraged to use the opensource ones like Zotero and Mendeley
What are the procedures that you need to follow to use your institution’s interlibrary loan system? Not sure that the system works anymore
What referencing and style guides are available to you online at your institution? Not sure of any but our University style is APA and all these are available online
What is an open access site? One that provides free online access to its contents
Do you know how to create a search alert? No
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This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by
Irene.
The ppt was very informative and an eye opener in terms of my role as a supervisor to help my students become information literate. Previously I have been thinking that the library orientation is sufficient and that students should then be able to move on to do literature review and the writing. However, I now realise I need to do more in terms of reference management, data management, use of the alternative sources of information, research data storage, open access publishing, etc.
The course is especially well-timed for me since this semester I have a postgraduate course on Proposal development and I will definitely implement many of the ideas I am learning now, for example the use of the referencing managers.
I just wanted to note down something about the library at our university in Amsterdam. In my Master supervision I actually do not mention the library a lot since there is a specific course on research methods within each master programme. But this course just made me realise that I indeed need to highlight its potential to every student I supervise. As an international PhD coordinator I mention VU library and its services to all our new and incoming PhDs.
The library provides access to all relevant article and books databases via our personal VU id. Everyone with the VU id also has an off campus access to this database.
Our library also offers workshops on referencing, systematic literature review, library search, research data management and organises a special workshop in our orientation seminar for all new PhDs at VU. The library also takes care of dissertation publishing, of enabling open access to research data (if a scientists requests), measures VU research impact (or can measure impact of each individual scientist upon request) and provides support in developing one’s own research page. All in all our library is an amazing resource and has really improved its services throughout the years to better support our scientists.I checked the powerpoint session and it made me aware of a couple of important things. First, as a master student supervisor I generally notice discrepancies among students regarding skills they posses when it comes to doing research.I sometimes find myself doing a crash course on research project development and research methods in the first two meetings with some students. It is really important to critically assess the skills students have (Or don’t have) and develop a plan for tackling those shortcomings.
Second, the presentation outlined how important it is to engage with the university library. I think that we need to emphasise the relevance of our libraries, and encourage students to use digital tools for their research.
Third, the presentation made a reference to ORCID, altmetrics and other tools to profile individual’s research output. Referencing to these tools early in the PhD trajectory is indeed relevant for academic profiling of the student. Nevertheless, I think it is also important for students to KNOW HOW TO promote their work and their research to non academic audiences. Besides traditional research oriented resources and support, perhaps the Library could play a role in profiling societal imprint of each student and develop tools for easy advertising via Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin etc. It is not just the role of our marketing and communication office to promote university research, but it is a responsibility of each researcher to explicitly show how what they are doing scientifically can have immense societal consequences.@Irene
The Library orientation is often thought of as sufficient by supervisors, so nobody can blame you for thinking the same! However, the timing of this orientation is usually in the beginning of a year. Libraries often get 1 time slot where they have to give all information in one sitting. Information is given that students won’t need until months later, so they are unable to realize the importance of what they’re hearing at that time, or they have forgotten it by the time they need to use this information.
Take reference managers: they often realize its importance when they’re done with their literature review and have to hand in a paper. By that time the realization is too late! You mention that you need to do more, but perhaps the Library is able and willing to step in and give extra workshop or other support throughout the research process of students.@Sandra
I totally agree that knowing how to promote your work outside of the traditional academic media is important. Unfortunately having systematic support of this at institutional level (like from the Library) seems to be very limited globally. I think that also makes researchers more vulnerable to sharing work in ways that can actually harm their reputation. Something for us to work on!Personally, I like to promote a linkage of both worlds (academic and societal). Take DOIs. These are unique identifiers of articles, and people outside of the academic world will probably not give them much thought. However, if you include the DOI of an article in your Twitter and Facebook messages the computer programs that try to measure societal attention to articles can better measure your article’s impact. Link the DOIs to your ORCID and you can create a profile of yourself and the attention you get outside of academic referencing. That in turn is very useful for grant applications.
What relationship do you and your students have with the library? – I encourage most of my students to read widely or extensively especially in their area of research / project. Proper understanding or mastering of the background information is crucial and also expands students overview of the project.
What kinds of library support services are there for your postgraduate students? Provide details. – We have a well stocked library at the university. Students are all registered for library and can access materials. I recommend appropriate reading materials and publications required by students especially literature review materials they cant access
How do you access your own library’s holdings? – I don’t understand this question
How do you keep up with the latest research in your field? – Subscriptions on major journals for alerts on any new materials and publications in the field. In touch with major research institutes and colleagues in the same fieldWhat online databases does your institution use? – I need to confirm
Which referencing software does your institution provide? (For example: Endnote, Refworks, Zotero, Mandeley and Paperpile) – Endnote
What are the procedures that you need to follow to use your institution’s interlibrary loan system? – Not sure
What referencing and style guides are available to you online at your institution?
What is an open access site? – site enables free and unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books. It is open to all, with no access fees.Do you know how to create a search alert? – No. I need to be taught
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This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by
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