Thursday 28 November 2013

Investigation into match-fixing in English football

I'm sure many of you have heard about this news story already, but I just wanted to highlight it anyway in case it's of interest to those of you in Football Studies/Sports Studies/Sport Management. The National Crime Agency have made some arrests, including some footballers, in relation to allegations of match-fixing in English football. If this is a subject you'd like to look into further, you'll find quite a few journal articles on match-fixing and corruption in football across the globe in DISCOVER.

Friday 22 November 2013

The Bedford Physical Education Archive

As many of you start to think about dissertation topics, I wanted to highlight a brilliant resource here at Bedford which you might not yet have come across: The Bedford Physical Education Archive. The archive contains loads of items and documents from 1903 to the present day, from the UoB Bedford campus' previous incarnations as Bedford Physical Training College, the Bedford College of Physical Education and DMU. What is now UoB Bedford began life as a PE college for women and there is some fascinating material in there (including things like the old PE and games uniforms!) which could be really useful for anyone looking at the history of physical education or sport and social history. The webpages tell you more about what is in the archive, upcoming plans and events, and how to contact and visit them (scroll right down the page to find the left-hand menu to navigate through the different sections). They also have a Facebook page.

They're about to release a DVD about the college during the World Wars, and the roles that the students played; there'll be a launch event on December 1st.

I hope some of you might be able to make use of this fantastic resource. If you have any questions, do get in touch with the archive staff.

Monday 18 November 2013

House of Lords report on the 2012 Olympic Legacy published

The House of Lords Select Committee on Olympic and Paralympic Legacy have today published their report, "Keeping the flame alive: the Olympic and Paralympic Legacy", which suggests that more needs to be done by the government to maintain any kind of effective legacy from London 2012. You'll find discussions of the report on various news sites too, such as this one from the BBC.

Tuesday 12 November 2013

Using social media effectively

OK, I will admit it; I spend far too much of my spare time on Facebook and Twitter. I have committed various social media sins, including posting photos of my dinner, creating cryptic passive-aggressive statuses, and live-tweeting television "talent" shows. But as well as all of that, social media can be a really powerful tool for maintaining your current awareness in your subject area; I also use Twitter to connect with other librarians around the world, to ask questions and share experiences, to discover best practice and to find out about new developments, events, opportunities and issues in libraryland, and I've already suggested to many of you whom I've met that you consider doing the same. Maintaining a current awareness of what's going on in your subject can be beneficial not only for your academic work, but for things beyond that, such as being able to demonstrate excellent knowledge of your sector in job interviews. So I would suggest making use of all avenues to do so, especially the free ones. This is why I was really pleased recently when a set of librarians from the Universities of Leeds, York and Manchester released a brilliant "Student guide to social media", which contains clear explanations of various tools available and is full of ideas on how and why to use them for your studies. Have a look; I think you might find it really useful. If you're already using social media for your work, or plan to after looking at the guide, I'd be really interested to hear about what you're using and how.

Friday 8 November 2013

Using "Big Data" to predict sports injuries

I spotted this article on the BBC News website this morning; Bath Rugby are interpreting and analysing data from their players to try to predict (and to prevent) injuries by picking up on potential issues with the body. Being a librarian, I found this really interesting from an information management point of view, but it also has implications for professional sport, for both the players and the game, and the author of the article (most likely a journalist rather than someone involved in sport) ends by pondering whether this will be a positive or negative thing. What do you think?