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

Starting a Music Degree? Here's How to Impress Your Lecturers!

If you're a performing artist, you'll probably be encouraged to keep a reflective diary, logging your progress as a musician or actor.  The Whittaker Library has books to help you develop your diary-keeping skills as a reflective practitioner.

However, there will be essays and topics to research, too.  So take a tip from a librarian: keep a record of everything you read, as well as everything you play.  And in your note-taking, never copy out a quote without noting the page where you found it. Make sure you put inverted commas at the start and end of the quote, then there's no risk of you accidentally using those words without citing who wrote them!  The form of referencing used at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland is called the Harvard system.  (Don't worry if you forget the name - you'll be reminded soon enough!)

If you keep a bibliography (list of books read), note the author, title, publication place, publisher and date. Also the edition, if it's not the first.  It's a good idea to keep your list in alphabetical order by author, so you can find things later.  A Word document will do fine!  

If you enjoy downloading apps and freeware, you can even save your bibliography to the cloud so that you can access it from any computer you use.  

Take a look at Mendeley or Zotero - two useful free resources.  They help you control that growing list of references, and assist with formatting the bibliographic details so they're always consistent.  Come and see us if you need a bit of help getting started. Sometimes it's a good idea to annotate your bibliography with any earth-shattering discoveries you made whilst reading.  These apps will offer you a place for making such notes if you think they would help. ("Chapter 8: author describes harmonics in clarinet timbre.  Chapter 10: bagpipes as a martial instrument.")

Congratulations!  You're already well on the way to being one of the most organised freshers in town!  Your lecturers will be seriously impressed.

Library Tips for Getting Started On a Research Project

Researchers at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland are generally researching some aspect of the performing arts.  We've compiled a reading list of books that we have in stock about research methodology - some are more general, and others are subject-specific.  You can access the list HERE.

Did you know that If you're one of our registered readers, you can save your own reading lists once you’ve logged in?  This is a way of keeping note of useful material.  Alternatively, you could sign up to Zotero or Mendeley.  But do start keeping a bibliography from the very beginning of your research - there's nothing worse than being unable to trace something that you're sure you read a while ago!

We are the Whittaker Library at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, here to support our performing artists and technicians in their teaching, learning and research.

Diigo - save those favourites

With the news that Yahoo won't be continuing to support Diigo indefinitely, fans of social bookmarking have identified Diigo as a new, viable alternative. Indeed, it's arguably better, offering some of the features of Zotero as well as the bookmarking capabilities of Delicious.

• Transferring your favourites from Diigo to Delicious is a doddle.
• Access your favourites from your PC, android or other device with ease
• Users of RSAMD Moodle will find Diigo endorsed by our Moodle gurus too
• Musings about librarianship - a blog from Singapore comments on Diigo

Visit www.diigo.com to get started.