Every Tuesday and Thursday evening throughout October, starting October 14th, students can once again tune in to the popular Research Toolkit workshops to learn advanced research tactics.
Facilitated by librarians from the Patrick Power Library, and delivered via Microsoft Teams, the Fall 2021 Research Toolkit workshops are a great opportunity for research assistants, teaching assistants, and graduate students to connect with one another and with information experts, ask questions, and expand their research skills and knowledge.
“The Research Toolkit is designed to provide a solid foundation for students who need to develop advanced research skills,” explains Heather Sanderson, Information Literacy Librarian and co-creator of the workshops. The sessions are geared towards research assistants, teaching assistants, graduate students, honour students and anyone who is ready to move on to more advanced search techniques.
The sessions include key topics such as citation searching; effective searching of Google and Google Scholar to find grey literature, and finding and using data and statistics. Students will also learn the basics of copyright in academia.
Whether you are interested in one session or all five, you only need to register once! Students who attend any one session will receive access to all recordings.
Those interested can register online anytime.
For more information, please contact Information Literacy Librarian, Heather Sanderson (heather.sanderson@smu.ca) or Instructional Development Librarian, Cindy Harrigan (cindy.harrigan@smu.ca).
Research Toolkit – Fall 2021 Schedule
Thursday, October 14, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 “Researching the Literature Review” with Heather Sanderson
What is a literature review, and what do you need one for? Where do they appear, and how they are typically organized? We’ll cover several key tools and strategies for crafting your lit review, such as citation searching, to help you be more comprehensive and systematic in your literature searches.
Tuesday, October 19, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 “Internet Expertise for Researchers” with Cindy Harrigan
This session will focus on how to find useful, quality information for academic or scholarly research, using Google and Google Scholar. Topics covered include grey literature, search strategies, and tips on how to evaluate search results.
Thursday, October 21, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 “Show Me the Numbers: Stats and Data Discovery Tools to Support your Research” with Joyce Thomson
This session will focus on key concepts and challenges in finding data and statistics for your research as well as several useful places and strategies to explore, particularly for survey data from Statistics Canada.
Tuesday, October 26, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 “Scholarly Journal Quality and Open Access” with Peter Webster
Can you identify the quality of a scholarly journal? This is a key skill for researchers and authors. Topics covered include various impact measures in use and strategies to identify the “best” articles in a subject area, as well as the benefits of open access and how to avoid predatory journals.
Thursday, October 28, 2021
5:30 – 6:30 “Copyright and You: What You Need to Know” with Amy Lorencz
How does copyright relate to your thesis/dissertation? Quite a lot, actually! Save yourself a headache later on by tuning in to learn about licenses, Creative Commons, using images, and what you need to know before you submit.
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