InfoSkills workshops

Not only does Endnote software allow you to store your references as you are searching resources for information, but it can also take the pain out of referencing by automatically inserting citations and references into your Word document as you write your assignments, so you don’t have to worry about where your full stops and commas go. Endnote provides a number of referencing styles for you to explore, however for our workshop, we will focus on the MMU Harvard style available within Endnote.

In this workshop we will cover an introduction to the MMU Harvard Referencing style, including why you need to cite and reference; how to format and present citations and how to reference some of the key sources you will use in your academic work.

Struggling to find relevant academic information for your assignments? This hands on workshop will show you techniques to improve your searches and how to use Manchester Met Library's search engine, Library Search to get straight to the information you need for your academic work.

Time to crack on with your literature review and don’t know where to start? This hands on session is aimed at final year undergraduate and postgraduate students and will help you to plan your searches and use time saving search techniques to find the most relevant academic sources. Learn how to use subject specific databases to find high quality academic journals and research papers.

Learn to critically evaluate online information and identify fake news. During this session we will discuss the psychological, technological and societal reasons why we believe fake, biased or misleading stories/information. It will also look at the different motivations of the creators of false stories and misinformation. By investigating real life news from a variety of media, you will learn to identify fake news and misinformation.

Want to impress potential employers with your online profile? Worried that your social media accounts might not be showcasing your best self? This interactive workshop will provide practical tips for maintaining a professional online persona and equip you with the knowledge you need to effectively manage your digital footprint.

Does your course require you to carry out some legal research and you don’t know where to start? This session is aimed at students who do not study law but have some elements of law in their course. This hands on session will introduce you to the legal databases the Man Met University subscribes to and show you how to search for legal information such, as cases and legislation.

Showing a potential employer that you really understand them and their sector is an impressive way to stand out in the recruitment process. This practical session shows you how to use the variety of resources available at MMU to research your potential employer and the market in which they operate.

Researching an organisation and the sector in which it operates is an important employability skill, and will prepare you for your job or placement application, interview and future career. This practical workshop will cover what areas you should research and why, and will provide you with the knowledge of where and how to locate valuable information around the public and not-for-profit sectors.

This Cited reference searching workshop is aimed at postgraduate researchers and academic staff. Cited reference searching is a technique that will help you locate additional articles for your research. Previously published articles relevant to your research appear in the list of references at the end of a journal article. A cited reference search, however, brings you forward in time to identify more recent articles which cite the original article that you located. This hands-on workshop will take you through the process of carrying out a cited reference search on appropriate databases..

This session, aimed at Postgraduate researchers and academic staff, focuses on copyright issues that you should be aware of during your research process. It is important to understand why copyright matters when presenting research in a thesis as this will involve the use of the work of others. You should be aware of the rights that apply to your own work and consider how you want others to use the content that you create.

This Research Data Management (RDM) workshop is aimed at academic staff and postgraduate researchers. RDM is about documenting, organising, storing, and providing access to the data you produce as part of your research. Good data management will improve the efficiency of your research by saving you time and enabling you to go back and understand your data. It will also add value to your data by increasing its visibility making it findable, understandable and accessible for others. The workshop will introduce you to RDM, present the key steps to good data management and provide some useful tools for managing data including what support the library can offer.

This workshop is aimed at academic staff and postgraduate researchers. The University believes that making your research outputs available as widely as possible maximises their impact within the academic community and society. This is in line with Open Access (OA) principles, which endorse free, online, and unrestricted access, where possible, to all research outputs. This session will help articulate the different routes to open access and provide an overview of some of the technical aspects that need to be considered within open access, such as publisher and funder requirements.

Ever wondered… what is the difference between the number of citations and times cited? What is the impact factor of a journal? How to find your ‘h’ index? What are almetrics and how do they relate to those funny coloured circles on databases and in e-space? If you want to know the answers to any of these questions and more, and why any of this matters, come along to this session introducing you to the world of bibliometrics.