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.

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?

Workshops on using DISCOVER and RefWorks

Just a quick post to say that I and the Education librarians are running workshops all this week on using DISCOVER and RefWorks. No need to book, just turn up. You can see what's on when on the What's On calendar on the library webpages.

Welcome (back)!

Hi all

Welcome, if you are new to us this year, and welcome back to all returners. I hope you've had a good summer and that you're ready for the new year. I've now seen all new SSPA students for a library tour and induction; it was lovely to meet you and I shall be seeing some of you again in your lectures very shortly.

I promised I wouldn't fill this blog with library announcements, but I just wanted to highlight a few things that are new this academic year:

• As mentioned in the previous post, we have brand new, faster PCs in Bedford Library.
• Professional and Academic Development have created a brilliant new BREO Community called "Study Hub: Online", which contains loads of useful helpsheets and worksheets on all aspects of study skills. It's definitely worth getting yourself enrolled on there and having a look; I think you'll find it really helpful, whatever stage of your course you are at. Instructions on how to enrol are here: http://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/studyhubonline .
• In response to student feedback that there wasn't enough silent study space in Bedford library, we have now had work done to turn the whole second floor into a silent study floor. This is going to be a great space. It is very nearly ready, but at the moment the floor is still closed for health and safety reasons, so if you need to get any books from the second floor, please fill out a form at the Customer Service Desk on the ground floor and library staff will fetch them for you.

Finally, please don't forget that I am here to help with using the library, finding information, and referencing, so please do get in touch! https://lrweb.beds.ac.uk/help/ALLs/rachel-bickley.

Have a great term, everyone.

Brand new computers in Bedford Library

Just a quick library update for you...all of the student PCs in Bedford Library have now been replaced by new, faster machines, and they're up and running, ready for your return.

If you've got any feedback on this or anything else in the library, please do get in touch, or complete the feedback form here.

British Library displays the original FA rule book

On this miserable, murky morning, a friend sent me this link to a story about a temporary new addition to the British Library's exhibits; the Football Association's 1863 minute book, containing the original rules of football (sounds like they're quite different to what is played to now!).

It'll be there until 17th December and you can see it for free in the British Library's Treasures Gallery (which also contains lots of other cool stuff if you're into books or history).

Universities using Premier League football to attract students?

This story from the Times Higher Education popped up in my Twitter feed this morning, and I thought I'd share as it might be of interest to those of you in Football Studies: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/sector-aims-to-score-with-premier-league-profiles/2006329.article . Apparently some UK universities are trying to forge connections with Premier League football clubs as another way of attracting international students to the institution. Read carefully though; it contains a lot of speculation on the impact of these schemes and, as the article points out, not much evidence.

There's also an excellent example here of incomplete referencing and why that's not good; the writer doesn't give us any of the information that we need to easily track down the Elliott and Soo article mentioned in the second-from-last paragraph, which, if you were going to talk about this topic in an assignment, you'd probably want to read. A little detective work in DISCOVER uncovered it however, so here's a chance to practise your searching skills if you want to try to locate it! Think about which words to put in the DISCOVER search box, play around with your search terms, and remember that you can often read abstracts when you click on the title of an item, to try to work out if it's the article you're after - it might not be obvious from the title. I'm going to let you have a go yourselves first but do get in touch if you can't find it and I'll point you in the right direction.

Finally, I hope that those of you who follow football are looking forward to the new season starting. I support Aston Villa, so "looking forward to" is not quite the term I'd use...