Twittaker's Whittaker Library Update

The final day of our RCS staff Learning and Teaching Conference saw a variety of updates from different departments. Information Services took their turn after lunch. We thought we'd just share with our readers some of the library highlights.

The All-Singing,All-Dancing Catalogue

We have a shiny new catalogue! Catherine demonstrated it, and showed colleagues the magnificent capabilities of Catalogue Plus, which searches online resources as well as books, music and other resources on shelves. It has to be said that the catalogue now looks much better - but the differences may take a little getting used to, so please do ask for help if you can't find something that you were sure is in stock!

• Explore the new catalogue here (click on the link)

We'd also like to remind Conservatoire students and colleagues about the library's Portal pages - find us under Information Services – you'll find library guides, copyright info, referencing, effective learning guides, offsite access guides, and more.

Help with introducing suitable online resources

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Whittaker Library staff do library tours (orientation), and talk to first years about catalogue and e-resources. In both cases, we can only give a quick overview, to avoid information overload. Little and often is better than one big demo and then no more. We're very happy to offer more help at point of need eg first assignment, first essay etc. Ask us! 
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Pedagogically – we're happy to do demos, but we also embrace active or collaborative learning. For example, we're happy to meet classes in an IT lab, or devise paired exercises looking up learning resources on students' own mobile devices. And we’re open to suggestions for other ways of getting info across in a flipped classroom kind of way.

Referencing - The Effective Learning team is available three times a week, Tues 12-2, Weds 12-2 and Fri 4-6). The team's very useful handouts are on Portal – on the library pages. Additionally, the librarians are happy to help with referencing queries if the Effective Learning team aren’t around. We can talk about referencing to individuals or groups as required. Ask us!
 

Bibliographic Citation Software - A WARNING!  Have you been collecting your references on the RefMe software?  It was easy and accessible to use, so lots of people adopted it.  However, not long ago, it was absorbed into CiteThisForMe.  Now, the choice is this: pay a subscription, or you can only keep your references for one week. And then it's gone.  [Pause to let that sink in - it's a scary thought!]

Mendeley and Zotero are reliable and long-established resources, and you can use them for free.  RCS students and colleagues are welcome to speak to us if you'd like help getting started.

Subject Queries -  The library has three Performing Arts Librarians, with different specialisms. Please do get in touch directly or send a message to library@rcs.ac.uk if you have a general query.