WISER coming up: Images, E-books and Finding scholarly materials

During 4th week Bodleian Libraries will be running workshops on finding and using digital images in your research, locating and manipulating academic e-books, working with e-book readers and finding scholarly materials.  Please find full details below:

Digital images: ARTstor, Bridgeman Education and VADS for teaching and learning (Thu 7 November  9:15 - 11:15) (wk 4) – This workshop examines two major digital image collections subscribed to by the University - ARTstor and Bridgeman Education - and a third resource, free for educational use, VADS. All of these are geared to research and teaching in the humanities, history of science and medicine, and social sciences. Finding viewing, presenting and managing images will be covered.
Presenters:  Clare Hills-Nova and Vicky Brown > Book your place.

WISER: E-books  (Thurs 7 Nov 2.00 - 3.00) (wk 4) - An overview of academic e-books looking at what is currently available in e-format, how to find and access e-books and how to make the most of e-book functionality.
Who is this session for?  All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenter: Hilla Wait  > Book your place

WISER: E-book readers (Thurs 7 November 3.15 - 4.15)  (wk 4)  How useful are e-book readers in academic work? Can they be used for accessing library materials? What are the features to look out for when considering purchase? These and similar questions will be considered with reference to the i-Pad, the Amazon Kindle and Sony Touch e-readers and smart phones.
Who is this session for? All members of Oxford University and other Bodleian Libraries readers
Presenter: Hilla Wait  > Book your place

WISER: Finding stuff – scholarly literature for your research (Fri 8 Nov 2.00 - 5.00 ) (wk 4)
A practical introduction to searching for scholarly materials to support your research, covering a range of tools for finding monographs, journal articles, conference papers, theses and more.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers and academics
Presenters:  Joanne Edwards, Craig Finlay, Sue Bird and Angela Carritt  > Book your place

Coming soon:

The Research Skills Toolkit (week 8 of Michaelmas Term and week 1 of Hilary Term)  - A hands on workshop for research students introducing key tools, techniques and resources for research   Topics covered in this 2 hour session include:

• Reference management software
• Literature searching and advanced search techniques
• Keeping up to date with emerging research
• Managing your thesis with Word
• Analysing data with Excel pivot tables
• Podcasting with Audacity and Weblearn
• Free software for image manipulation
• Measuring research impact

Who is this session for? These workshops are open to graduate researchers and take place > check dates and book your place online.

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities: Why not follow join our mailing list by sending an empty email to wiser-subscribe@maillist.ox.ac.uk, follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/oxwiser or visit the BodWiser blog at http://bodwiser.wordpress.com

Questions? - Please contact angela.carritt@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

History Information Fair 2013

30 October 2013, North Writing School, Examination Schools, 3-5pm

Designed to help graduates prepare for their research project, all graduates are encouraged to drop in on this fair. The fair is conceived as a gateway to the university's information resources.

Oxford is fortunate in having rich library and archival holdings and electronic resources. Discover more about the resources available and how to access them at the Fair.

The event is your change to speak to expert archivists and librarians from the Bodleian Library, rich in British and European collections, and of libraries holding collections in US, Indian, Latin American, Slavonic and African and Commonwealth history.

Further information

Ends soon! Readers' Guide Retrospective Trial

Our trial to Readers' Guide from 1890-1982 ends next Thursday (31st October). If you have been intending to make use of this resource while we have access, now's your last chance to do so!

Readers' Guide Retrospective provides access to the archive of the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature from 1890-1982, indexing articles in the popular American press by subject, as well as to over three million articles from approximately 375 periodicals, many in full text. Please send comments and feedback to jane.rawson@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. 

Research skills toolkit for postgrads: Book now!

A free hands-on workshop for research students introducing key tools, techniques and resources.   Topics covered in this 2 hour session include:

• Reference management software
• Literature searching and advanced search techniques
• Keeping up to date with emerging research
• Managing your thesis with Word
• Analysing data with Excel pivot tables
• Podcasting with Audacity and Weblearn
• Free software for image manipulation
• Measuring research impact
• Your thesis, copyright and submitting to ORA

During the sessions you will also meet with subject specialists for help and guidance on further training.

These workshops are open to graduate researchers and take place in week 8 of Michaelmas and week 1 of Hilary Term.

Read more and book your place

Open Access Week @ Oxford 2013

Welcome back! New term/new year round-up

Welcome back to all those returning to Oxford after the summer, and welcome to all those who have newly arrived!

Here's a summary of a few things you might have missed over the summer:

SOLO upgrade
The software that powers SOLO was upgraded in early September, and this brought with it several new features, including browse searching, date range search, improved export options, and multiple selection/exclusion of facets (refine your results). > More information.

New VHL website
Our website had a makeover earlier in the summer, in line with the other Bodleian Libraries websites. We took the opportunity to review and revise all the content and it now contains much more useful information than previously. > Take a look

84,000+ more ebooks now available
Following a successful trial in Trinity Term 2013, Oxford readers now have access to over 84,000 extra e-books in the Ebrary Academic Complete collection. The books are all now available in SOLO. > Find out more

For those of you who are new to Oxford, I'll be running a quick induction tour of the VHL on Thursday of 1st week (17th October) at 1.30pm. No need to book, just turn up at the library!  You can also find lots of information about how to find resources and use the library on our new website at http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/vhl/getting-started