The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu

Did you think librarians led peaceful lives?  Not in Timbuktu, they don't!  Book review in Times Higher Education this week ... 

Joshua Hammer - The Badass Librarians of Timbuktu

Times Higher Education - TEACHING in Higher Education. We spotted this ...

Here's an interesting article in today’s Times Higher Education. We thought it might interest our PGCert students working towards their teaching diploma.  And indeed, any educationalists!

If you are not updating your lectures, you are letting your students down

 Stop clinging to the way you’ve always done things and work a little smarter, says Chris Moore

(Want more books about teaching?  Check out our catalogue!)

Referencing Just Got Easier!

RefME - Have You Discovered It Yet?

We all have our favourite apps when it comes to regularly-performed tasks like referencing.  Karen swears by Mendeley.  Others use Zotero - both are freeware.  (Some institutions offer institutional  access to EndNote, which saves you money.)  Diigo is great freeware for saving hyperlinks to the cloud.

So why try another?  Well, we read a review of RefME in the Times Higher Education magazine, and it looks impressively simple.  Most of us just want to keep a list of what we've read, and a way of pulling it into whatever we're writing, whether for footnotes, endnotes or a bibliography.

That's what RefME does.  Find your book via the search box, and save it.  Exporting couldn't be simpler - it provides a box of text for you to copy and paste into your paper, in a wide range of formats.

•  RefME
• THE review of RefME by Chris Havergal

"The REF" - What's It All About?

"The REF" is the Research Assessment Framework - it determines the quality and ranking of research in all the UK's universities, conservatoires and art schools.

The results of the 2014 REF came out at 00.01 this morning, Thursday 18th December.  Since the last rating and ranking exercise was in 2008, it's a very big deal indeed.  If you hear people talking about it, you'll understand why they're so animated.  

What it means to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland - click HERE.

Institutions are assessed on output, impact, and overall.  "GPA" means Grade Point Average.   Here is the link to the REF website:- 

http://www.ref.ac.uk/

And you can also consult Times Higher Education's Table of Excellence, HERE:-

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/news/ref-2014-results-table-of-excellence/2017590.article

Academic Integrity, Plagiarism, or Simple Misunderstanding

An article in the Times Higher Education magazine suggests students don't always mean to plagiarise, but actually don't understand what counts as plagiarism.

Read "I'm no plagiarist, I moved a comma", by Elizabeth Gibney (THE 6 June 2013).

There's another Whittaker Live posting about academic integrity, which we posted on 20 May.  Read it here:-

Academic Integrity and Internet Searching

Academic Integrity and Internet Searching

Yesterday, 'Whittaker' found an interesting article online for his own research.   He didn't recognise the name of the place where the author was working.  All was well, though: it turned out to be a department in an American university - the name was just a bit unusual.  The author was bona fide, too; and finally, the article was indexed in RILM - so was likely to be trustworthy.

So, if you're researching a subject, here are two useful principles to guide you on your way:-

1. Check out the source of the information.  Is it likely to be reliable? 
2. Quote the source of the information, so people can see where you got it from!  All a question of academic integrity.

Postscript. Since posting this, 'Whittaker' notes a recent article in Times Higher Education, on this very subject.  Read it here:-

'I'm no plagiarist, I moved a comma'
By Elizabeth Gibney, THE, 6 June 2013.

Artistic Practice: Creativity as Research

The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland knows all about practice-based research, so it was interesting to see last week's Times Higher Education (7 March 2013) focusing on this very subject.

John Gill wrote the Leader,  Untangling Creation Myths.
Matthew Reisz wrote the feature, Blurring the lines between art and research.
Nicholas Till wrote another feature, Opus versus output.

If you read THE online, there is the opportunity to comment at the end of articles, so why not join in the debate?!

What Karen Read (Irish Folk Culture)

Karen did a ‘What are you reading?’ contribution for this week's Times Higher Education, about Felicity Hayes-McCoy’s The House on an Irish Hillside.  It’s about Irish folk-culture: would you like to see it in the Whittaker Library?  Read the review here.

Race and Racism in Today's Theatre

There was an interesting theatre review in Times Higher Education magazine at the beginning of November.  It's thought-provoking, so you might like to read it.  Here's the link:-

• THE 1st November 2012, pp.50-51, 'It ain't half Shakespeare, Mum', by Peter J. Smith

(It's a review of Red Velvet, by Lolita Chakrabarti, and is on at Tricycle Theatre London until this Saturday, 24 November.  Our Drama and Dance Librarian will be ordering the playscript, to add to our collection.)

NUS: inductions should continue beyond 'hello'

'Whittaker' found this in the THE this week:- NUS: inductions should continue beyond 'hello' 

Oh yes, indeed! Here at the Royal Conservatoire, the Whittaker Library has been very keen to continue the induction conversation beyond the initial 'hello'. And now we find the NUS agrees with us - what wonderful news!

Visit NUS Connect, on the National Union of Students website, to read more about the NUS Charter for Academic Support.

Tribes and Tribulations

In the THE (Times Higher Education) 10th November 2011, article by Adrian Furnham.

Beware the muddy waters of interdisciplinary research, and the different foibles of different disciplines.  Not to mention the style-guide pedants who believe that there's only one correct way of doing anything, be it references or research approach.

An interesting read - click the link.

Royal Academy of Music gets mentioned in Poppletonian

The Times Higher Education magazine has a tongue-in-cheek back page "newsletter" called The Poppletonian.

Readers will be interested to learn that the Royal Academy of Music made it into the hallowed pages of The Poppletonian last week (20th October 2011).

Nothing in The Poppletonian is to be taken seriously! 

A film about PhD students!

An intriguing article in the THE (Times Higher Education magazine) this week finds out how a popular cartoon about the secret life of research students has been turned into a film by its author.  But is it true to life?!  Read on:-

15 September 2011


When Jorge Cham adapted his hugely popular PhD cartoon for film, he eschewed animation and hired real Caltech students and academics for his comically true-to-life doctoral tales. Paul Jump reports.


Absent-minded academics and scientists who are a few base pairs short of a double helix are as much a cinema staple as maverick cops and superheroes with a troubled past. For all the recent rise in 3D film, Jorge Cham believes that researchers are rarely portrayed in ways that transcend that stereotypical dimension.  Read the whole article online here.

Support and advice for research students

Have you come across PhDChat?  I blogged about this before - you can join in the Twitter conversation with Nasima Riazat on Wednesdays, follow Nasima's tweets, read the blog or get involved in the  wiki.

Then there's The Thesis Whisperer (aka Inger Mewburn, a research support lecturer in Australia).  This is a fantastic resource - do take a look! 


And here's the THE (Times Higher Education) article which has just come out, about The Thesis Whisperer.