Managing your information: session 2
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Transcript of Managing your information: session 2
Managing your information:a workshop for first-year Ph.D. students
Session 2
Emma Coonan
Cambridge University Library
Course content
• Session 1: managing found/published information
• Session 2: managing the information you generate
store – organise – retrieve – synthesize
Session content
• Active reading: notemaking and recording
• Creativity vs. project management
• Keeping track: road maps, the big picture and lightbulb moments
• Learning styles: how do you work?
Reflection
Active reading
“The art of reading is to skip judiciously”
~ P.G. Hamerton
Step 1: Why are you reading?
http://sfl.emu.edu.tr/dept/alo/active4.htm
• To understand a concept?
• To gather specific facts?
• To identify the structure of an author’s argument?
• To find alternative views so you can challenge an argument?
Step 2: What’s in it for me?
• What’s relevant/useful for my own argument?
• What other work does this piece mesh with?
• What lightbulb moments does it spark?
• What might be a blind alley (a white rabbit)?
Step 3: Notemaking and futureproofing
• ‘Gut’ your text!
• Highlight, underline, strikethrough; annotate, use symbols
• Leave yourself clues about the content, e.g. on the cover page/in your referencing system
Useful tools:
• highlighter and pen• PDF-Xchange Viewer/Foxit/interactive software
Step 4: Extracting the best bits
Consider where and how to store the useful extracts:
1. referencing software
2. text document
3. index cards
4. other … ?
How will you find the relevant bits again – quickly and easily?
Base document (Teresa)
http://www.open.ac.uk/skillsforstudy/index-cards.php
Index cards
Mind mapping
Step 4: Extracting and futureproofing
How will you distinguish between:
• direct quotation
• paraphrase
• your own ideas
?
Activity: interrogate your text
Choose an approach ….
• colour-code, mark up and annotate by type of information/what’s in it for you
• produce a 25-word summary
• think of two questions that Jeremy Paxman would ask the author
• represent the argument as a mind map
Information issues
Tools for keeping on track
• Alerting services
• Research diary
• Road map
• Big picture
Alerting services
• Most citation databases offer RSS or email alerts
• Set up a profile and save useful searches
• ‘Drip-feed’ of information keeps you up-to-date but not overwhelmed
• Researcher blogs
Research diary
“The research diary can be seen as a melting pot for all of the different ingredients of a research project - prior experience, observations, readings, ideas - and a means of capturing the resulting interplay of elements.”
(www.biad.uce.ac.uk/research/rti/riadm/issue1/research_diaries.htm)
The "vehicle for ordered creativity"
(Schatzman & Strauss 1973: 105)
Road map
Fundamental structure of your research project: why – how – what?
• Why are you doing what you’re doing?
• How have you chosen to answer the question?
• What have you found out? What does this mean?
Giles Yeo, Clinical Biochemistry/Wolfson College
Road map
Fundamental structure of your research project: why – how – what?
• Why are you doing what you’re doing?
• How have you chosen to answer the question?
• What have you found out? What does this mean?
Road map (Jamie)
Road map: time management
Road map: time management
Big picture (Sandra)
Big picture
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/journalismlabs/2009/05/
Learning styles
Final tips
• Where to start
• Time and space
• Help and support
Where to start
Where to start
… not with the introduction!
Road map/research proposal should give you structure
Keeping a research diary and making summaries will get you writing
Write modularly, then link up chunks
Time and space
Time of day: creative thinking vs. repetitive work (e.g. proofing, bibliography checking)
Time out to relax and reflect
Ph.D. research is a snapshot in time – not never-ending!
Working space: the right environment for you
Enough room for a spatial overview of your work
Help and support
• University sources: GDP, CPPD, Skills Portal, Graduate Union
• Supervisors, research groups, librarians
• Friends and peers
• Online forums, e.g. Graduate Junction (www.graduatejunction.net), Postgraduate Toolbox (www.postgraduatetoolbox.net)
Thank you!