Black History Month - a Research Event at RCS

We're very happy to help promote this research event here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland!

Event: Black History Month (BHM) Doctoral Researchers’ Event
Event Date: 25/10/2019
Deadline for abstracts: 7/10/2019

The Equality and Diversity Forum in partnership with the Research and Knowledge Exchange directorate at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is pleased to present the first Black History Month (BHM) Doctoral Researchers Event to be held at the RCS on 25th October. 

This event is to promote and celebrate BAME researchers and their work.

Call for presentations: We would like to invite abstracts for a fifteen-minute presentation (performances are also encouraged) followed by discussion and questions. This call is open to all BAME arts and humanities doctoral researchers from the UK. The programme allows for 8 presentations and presenters are free to choose whether or not their presentation will directly address the challenges and/or opportunities of being a BAME researcher.

Please send a title and a 250-word outline of your presentation to a.arockiam@rcs.ac.uk by Monday 7th Oct.

The event is free to all. If you would prefer to just attend the event or are interested in chairing or moderating please email a.arockiam@rcs.ac.uk. Please note that there are limited places due to the venue capacity.

Non-BAME doctoral researchers are also welcome to attend and can email a.arockiam@rcs.ac.uk.

Presentations will be followed by an evening event of poetry, opera and a panel discussion focused on ‘Decolonising the curriculum in the arts.’ All participants will be eligible for a free ticket.

Spotting Fake News

Here's a quick story!  Once upon a time there was an English musician who studied in Italy in his youth and ended up in Scotland. Two hundred years later, there are scores  by both the English-turned-Scotsman, and by his Italian tutor, in a university library.  

End of story. Shame, isn't it?!

Did you imagine the Brit might have deposited not only his own books but also the tutor's publications in the library?  Or did someone else deposit (or decide to keep) the Brit's books in the library because he was a popular composer?  Or did the Brit's copies of the Italian's scores end up in the secondhand market and then find their way to the library later?  There could be a wonderful detective story in this!

Before you make any assumptions, look at the evidence.  At the moment, the only verifiable truths in this story are in the first paragraph above.  No documents have, or can yet, be cited as evidence - all the rest is guesswork. Music wasn't taught in universities for several decades after the Brit died, and there's nothing to suggest he had any other involvement with the university. He was a music teacher and composer, not a scientist, lawyer or theologian.

So the moral of the tale? Don't jump to conclusions.  Check your facts.  And make sure you reference any reliable sources for the evidence you do have! 



Spotting Fake News (be a good scholar) on Biteable.

Mental Attitude (User Education as a Performance Art)

 In a discussion about user education (that's when we librarians show you, the users, how our catalogue and online resources work), librarians discussed their private reservations about standing up and sharing info that is probably not the average student's most pressing preoccupation.  We know you'd rather be playing, or composing, or acting ... 
We do try to make it interesting ...  Yes, we realise someone would kill us if we actually danced on the piano! 

• Research it! (library resources for BMus 4) Powerpoint 

Free Research Planners and Guides from Hugh Kearns

We follow Hugh Kearns on Twitter - he offers a lot of very useful advice for PhD students and other
researchers.

Thinkwell

Today, he shared this link, offering free planners and guides.  Planning is essential to any effective research activity, so why not save the link NOW, and commit to downloading your planner this week!

http://www.ithinkwell.com.au/resources

Podcast Your Research

We've just found a great blog post on the LSE Impact Blog, about the benefits of disseminating your research using social media - and, specifically, by using podcasts.

Podcasting is like broadcasting, over the internet.  It tends to mean an audio recording, and means your research can potentially reach a much wider audience.  Have a look at this!  

When you're sharing something visual, then it's technically a screencast, and offers a whole load of different permutations of audiovisual media.

There's a book, Communicating Your Research By Social Media, which looks really interesting, but we'll get that later on this year.  For now, read the LSE Impact Blog and see if it sets you thinking!

• What could you podcast about?
• Or would you use a blog (with or without video)?
• Or screencast a powerpoint (ditto)
• Or screencast a powerpoint with voiceover?
• What technical expertise would you need?
• Would it be worth learning these skills?  (Rhetorical question!)

Research Projects for the Teachers

Here at RCS, we have hundreds of undergraduates, and dozens of Masters performers, but we also have students taking either a PGCert or an MEd in Learning and Teaching in Higher Arts Education.  That means doing a research project.  And then there are the PhD students, too.

New students are introduced to our e-resources, but unless you've taken a close look, you maybe won't realise that some e-journals are specifically aimed at researchers.

Here's the link that takes you to Research, Education and Guidance journals.  There are about 30 titles, so do take time to browse. For a start, Research in Drama Education must surely be useful to quite a few of our postgrads!



If you find a journal that's right up your street, do let the rest of your class know!


AND A LITTLE EXTRA
We recorded a presentation about getting the most from our library catalogue and e-resources. You will find it here:-

• via the Portal:- https://portal.rcs.ac.uk/shared-docs/karen-mcaulay-library-resources/ 
• and on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Aa87ctLRMZU?hd=1  

Common Threads Linking Plainsong, Scottish Song & Fiddle Music, and ... Legal Deposit???

October 2015  

On Monday 12th October at 6 pm, Karen has been invited to give one of the regular Exchange Talks here at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.  

Admission is free, but you need to get a ticket from the box office.

Here's a teaser - see if you can work out what the common thread is!

 Karen’s Masters was about mediaeval plainsong; her PhD explored 18^th and 19^th century Scottish song collecting, and her part-time postdoctoral AHRC research investigated Scottish fiddle-tune accompaniments.  Next, she’ll be examining the University of St Andrews’ historic, but little-known Copyright Music collection. 

In her Exchange Talk, she will reveal the common thread which has interlaced all her research activities.

Naxos, Digital Theatre Plus, Oxford Music all on Whittaker Library website ...

 ?

RCS

Research

Resources

for 

iPad, laptop, PC or phone

OUR LIBRARY MICRO-RESEARCH PROJECT

We've made such a loud noise about our online subscriptions recently, that most students are well aware that we've got them!
 
... but we are still curious to find out if students prefer any particular term to describe all these databases.

• "Electronic" or "Digital"?
• "Online" or "Database"?
• "Collections" or "Resources"?

So we're doing a one-question survey to see if any particular terminology is more popular.

Would you like to know what the answer is?  Watch this space! We'll have reached a conclusion by the end of this week!

Glasgow Music Research - the University has a new Blog

Are you curious to know what other music researchers are up to?  Sneak a peek over the fence at the neighbours .... 

Music Research @ Glasgow:- Music Research at the University of Glasgow

Approaches to Critical Artistry - We have Web Resources to help your Research!

24:7

Royal Conservatoire of Scotland Students! Do you have to research a topic for your Critical Artistry module?
 
The Whittaker Library has lots of web resources* online - we subscribe to specialist websites on your behalf - websites and electronic journals. Find them via the Library Mahara pages or HERE on the RCS website:- http://www.rcs.ac.uk/about_us/libraryandit/databases/ 

Most things are accessible anywhere, any time - use your RCS login if you're off-site.  The subject librarians can recommend the best web resources for you.  They can also show you how to find e-books on the library catalogue.  You can use them without coming into the library at all - 24:7.
 
*Web resources, Electronic resources, E-resources - call them what you like!  They're specialist websites that we subscribe to - they aren't freely available on the web except to subscribers.

If you're interested in critical artistry, you might like to visit Rachel Kennedy's blog, where she writes about approaches to critical artistry.  Click here, and again here.

Are You Eligible for a Finzi Trust Award?

Finzi Trust

Today we received leaflets about the FINZI AWARDS 2015.

"The Scholarships aim to give opportunities for broadening horizons or taking a new path: their focus is arts based in the widest sense, but proposals must have a musical foundation. Projects might show a creative initiative or could involve engaging in some practical experience, education or research, perhaps giving a personal change of direction. Applications are welcome from trained musicians, but equally, previous professional experience is not a pre-requisite..."

• Finzi Trust Website 
• Finzi Awards 2015 details (Finzi Scholarships, and Churchill Finzi Fellowships) http://www.geraldfinzi.org/02-finzitrust/scholarship_awards.php 

We'll leave the leaflets at the Library Issue Desk if anyone would like to pick one up.

We are the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, here to assist the information needs of our performing artists and technicians.

IMPACT! Do You Use Social Media to Publicise Your Research?

There's an informative piece in the latest issue of Times Higher Education.  Read the whole article HERE.

"Twitter and blogs are not add-ons to research

28 August 2014 | By Chris Parr

"The best academics are those that build a form of public dialogue into their work...."

Success in Research - Useful Series in Whittaker Library

We’ve got several new books in this series now.  Here are the two latest ones, about presenting your research and achieving impact in research.  And there's another about to be catalogued, on publishing journal articles. 

Find the series in our catalogue, HERE.

Commonwealth Games - Musicians Everywhere, and here's a Tune for them!

With so much happening in Glasgow at the moment, there are musicians everywhere - Merchant City, Glasgow Green ...

Here's a highly appropriate fiddle tune from John Riddell's A Collection of Scots Reels, Minuets etc: 'The Bonny Green of Glasgow'.

The Bonny Green of Glasgow

It's one of the tunes Karen's looking at in the AHRC-funded Bass Culture project.  Riddell's bass-lines were basic (excuse the pun) to say the least! But effective all the same, we think.

Here's the next tune in the book: 'Miss Lillie Ritchie's Reel'.

Miss Lillie Ritchie's Reel

See what we mean?!  The collection is one of a number of late 18th and early 19th century fiddle tune books being digitised for the project.  You can read more about this research on the project blog:- http://bassculture.info/.

How do Arts and Cultural Institutions approach ‘Research and Development’? Northumbria investigates ...

Here's a project that policy-makers and research-leaders in the arts will want to follow.  Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne has a new research question:-

'R and D for the Arts

'Defining and conceptualising ‘Research and Development’ for the Arts

'The aim of the study is to define R and D for the arts and humanities, as it happens in the arts, humanities and cultural sectors and articulate R and D concepts and values. Relatively little theoretical and empirical research has previously been undertaken into how arts and cultural institutions approach ‘Research and Development’. Consequently, rigorous definitions, evaluation methodologies and metrics for R and D in the cultural sector are lacking. This research seeks to focus on how, in general, R and D in the arts should be conceptualised, defined for policy purposes and evaluated. Find out more HERE.'

Principal Investigator is Dr Elizabeth Lomas, iSchool, Faculty of Engineering and Environment, Northumbria University. Contact details on project homepage.

Network As Though Your Life Depended On It

We've mentioned the Guardian's Culture Professionals Network before - a great series which brings up to date information of interest to anyone working in the cultural sector.

Did we mention that there's also a Higher Education Network?  Again, this would be well-worth signing up to.  This week, for example, the Academics Anonymous blog (on the Higher Education Network homepage) is by someone who is studying for a PhD in their forties: 'Why are you doing a PhD at your age?'

Here are the links for you to follow up:-

• Guardian Culture Professionals Network - http://www.theguardian.com/culture-professionals-network
• Guardian Higher Education Network - http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network

Employability Skills: View Yourself As A Product (Youtube)

Those ever-helpful people at Jobs.ac.uk have shared a Youtube link about PhD graduates' employability skills.  Are you applying for work?  Take a look HERE.

Don't forget to bookmark Jobs.ac.uk while you're at it.  Not just for finding work in academia - also for tips on job-seeking in general - writing a CV, attending an interview, etc.

On the same subject, you might like to follow the blog, From PhD to Life.  Today, Jennifer Polk talks about her deepening understand of what job interviews are all about:-

• A Job Interview, by Jennifer Polk.  
• Homepage http://fromphdtolife.com/

Useful Website for Academics: Vitae, from the Chronicle of Higher Education

 Vitae: News and Advice for Higher Education

This is an American website from the Chronicle of Higher Education. Even allowing for some Transatlantic differences, it still offers many useful articles on all aspects of academic life, from diversity and equality to pay, research, and writing.  

Visit the website HERE.

BAMBOO DiRT - a Directory of Research Tools

Although the name is unusual, this is a very useful listing if you need electronic tools to conduct your research -

"Bamboo DiRT is a registry of digital research tools for scholarly use. Developed by Project Bamboo, Bamboo DiRT makes it easy for digital humanists and others conducting digital research to find and compare resources ranging from content management systems to music OCR, statistical analysis packages to mindmapping software."

http://dirt.projectbamboo.org/

Just out of curiosity, 'Whittaker' checked out the listings of bibliographic software and was amazed how much was there.  (Yes, Mendeley was amongst them, so Karen's world can keep turning ... )

If your research involves any of these activities, it looks as though BAMBOO DiRT is a link worth saving!

Social Networking for Researchers

You'll know about LinkedIn.

Have you heard of Academia.edu and ResearchGate?  Both are more focused on research, and less on employment opportunities, compared to LinkedIn.  They're websites where you can profile your own research, list your publications, or just find like-minded researchers to discuss common interests.

https://www.researchgate.net/home.Home.html

For example, if you were a music teacher, you might have found these discussions interesting - they all came up today:-

https://www.academia.edu/

Click on the link to Academia.edu above, and enter a keyword connected with your research into the box at the top of the page.  This is just a screenshot:-