The blog is moving!

After a happy six years on Blogger, we have decided to move the VHL blogs to a new home, on the Bodleian Libraries' own blogging platform. This gives us a more 'official' URL and ties us in more closely to other Bodleian blogs like that of the History Faculty Library.

From now on, you can find the VHL blog at http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/vhl and the US Studies Resources blog at http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/us-studies. The links to and from our website, Facebook and Twitter are being updated, so if you get your news from the blog that way you should continue to do so.

If you have subscribed to our blog either via RSS or email you should not need to do anything as we will be updating the settings for our subscription service, Feedburner. You should continue to receive new posts exactly as before, though please do let us know if not so that we can check it's all working as it should.

Christmas vacation opening hours

From Monday 9th December, the library will be open Monday-Friday, 9am-7pm. We'll be closed on Saturdays from then until the start of Hilary Term.

The library will close at 5pm on Friday 20th December for the Christmas break, and will reopen at 9am on Thursday 2nd January.

The assassination of President Kennedy, 50 years on: an exhibition

To mark the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, we have set out an exhibition drawing on our collections, including materials donated by two Distinguished Fellows of the Rothermere American Institute, to commemorate his life and death.

The exhibition may be seen in the three cases by the enquiry desk on the ground floor of the library. The first case contains materials relating to Kennedy from the Philip & Rosamund Davies US Elections Campaigns Archive - these include a 1958 ballot paper from Massachusetts, buttons and other ephemera from his campaign for President in 1960, and a copy of the official program for his Inauguration in January 1961. Accompanying these materials is a display of copies of clippings of news articles written by Godfrey Hodgson about President Kennnedy from his time as Washington Correspondent for The Observer which began in 1962. These news clippings have been donated to the RAI by Mr Hodgson as part of his collection of papers from his long career as a journalist and researcher on the United States.

The second and third cases cover the events of November 22, 1963 and their aftermath, drawing on the library's extensive holdings of official publications such as the Public Papers of the Presidents, Congressional Record, and the Report of the Warren Commission, as well as further articles from Godfrey Hodgson's collection.

The exhibition will remain on display in the library for the next few weeks.

WISER coming up: RefWorks and Web Archives

Bodleian Libraries will be running workshops on RefWorks and Web Archiving next week. Please find more details below.

RefWorks for Sciences and Social Sciences (Wed 20 Nov 2.00 - 5.00) (wk 6)  - RefWorks is an online tool which allows you to manage your citations/references, insert them into your word processed documents as footnotes or in text citations, automatically generate bibliographies and easily switch between citation styles. This introduction is open to all but the section on importing references will focus on Science/Social Science examples.

Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers, academics and undergraduates wishing to use reference management software.

Venue: IT Services, 13 Banbury Road.

Presenters: Nia Roberts, Cathy Scutt and Angela Carritt > Book Now

WISER: Web Archiving - Time Travel on the Web (Fri 22 Nov 10.30 - 12.00) (wk 6) - A basic introduction to the world of web archives. This session introduces selected web archives and their potential uses.

Who is this session for?  Anyone new to the idea of archiving web sites, wishing to obtain an overview of current provision especially postgraduate students, researchers, academics and university staff.

Venue: Radcliffe Science Library

Presenter:  Susan Thomas  > Please 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 

WISER coming up: Research impact, Reference management, Web archives

Bodleian Libraries will be running workshops and talks in the areas of research impact and reference management over the coming weeks. Please find more details below.

WISER Research Impact I: Who's citing you? (Tuesday 12 November 14.00-15.00)  This workshop introduces citation tracking as a technique for finding out who is citing your work using Web of Science, Scopus and Google Scholar.  The session will cover how to track citations using the three tools and the pros and cons of each.    We will also include time for you to try out each tool to find citations to your own work.
Who is this session for?:  Researchers, Academics, Research Support Staff and Research Postgraduates.
Presenters:  Juliet Ralph and Karine Barker
Venue: Radcliffe Science Library  > Please book your place online.

WISER Research Impact II – Tools of the Trade (Tuesday 12 November 15.15 - 16.15). Following hard on the heels of Research Impact I, this workshop will focus in on using Web of Science and Scopus to calculate h-indexes, find highly cited journals and to measure the impact of individual institutions and countries.    In addition we will look at using Essential Science Indicators to find "hot" papers and authors and the use of altmetrics to measure downloads and mentions in social media.
Who is this session for?:  Please note that this session is for researchers, Academics, Research Support Staff and Research Postgraduates in the Sciences and Social Sciences.    
Prior knowledge: If you are unfamiliar with citation tracking please attend Research Impact I: Who's citing you? first. 
Presenters:  Juliet Ralph and Karine Barker
Venue: Radcliffe Science Library  > Please book your place online.

WISER: Web Archiving - Time Travel on the Web (Fri 22 Nov 10.30 - 12.00) (wk 6) - A basic introduction to the world of web archives. This session describes how web archives came into being, and introduces selected web archives and their potential uses.
Who is this session for?  Anyone new to the idea of archiving web sites, wishing to obtain an overview of current provision especially postgraduate students, researchers, academics and university staff.
Venue: Radcliffe Science Library
Presenter:  Susan Thomas  > Please book your place online.

WISER: Tech Tools - Reference Management (Fri 22 Nov 9.15 - 12.15) (wk 6) -  Keeping track of your references and formatting them correctly for your thesis or publication is a chore. Reference management software makes it easy and is worth investigating. This introductory session gives an overview of how it works and the pros and cons of RefWorks, EndNote, Zotero and Mendeley.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers,  academics and undergraduates wishing to use reference management software.
Venue: IT Services, 13 Banbury Road.
Presenters: Oliver Bridle, Pamela Stanworth, Kelly Schultz and Angela Carritt > Please book your place online.

WISER: Mendeley for reference management (Wed 27 Nov 2.00 - 5.00)  (wk 7)  - Mendeley is a reference management package that helps you build libraries of references and then add citations and bibliographies to word processed documents.
Who is this session for? Postgraduates, researchers, academics and undergraduates wishing to use reference management software.
Venue: IT Services, 13 Banbury Road.
Presenters: Oliver Bridle and Owen Coxall  > Please book your place online.

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 > check dates and book your place online.

Keeping up with Bodleian Libraries training opportunities: Why not 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 

PC replacement Wednesday 6th November

Our reader PCs will all be replaced on Wednesday morning this week. We have requested that they be replaced in two batches so as to ensure that there are always some PCs available for readers to use, but there will inevitably be fewer available at any one time that morning.

The PC at our enquiry desk is also due to be replaced that morning, so please bear with us while that happens!

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