Welcome to SMIRK Unit
3 - Acquiring and storing
information


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SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

Acquiring information

When you have completed a search you will have a list of items in various formats, PDFs, paper or eBooks, journal articles, media resources and many others. Now you have that list you have to consider how you find the items on it.researching
You can print out full text, save it or email it to yourself and print at a later date.

If the item is not on the library catalogue:

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SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

 

Storing information

It is important that you are organised and keep track of the information you use. If you don't, and you want to refer back to it or have not finished locating all your resources - you can find yourself in difficulties.

Watch the two videos on the next pages and then think about the message they are trying to get across.

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Creative Commons Licence
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

 

Videos

Can't see this video? - you can watch it on the YouTube

 

Can't see this video? - you can watch it on the YouTube.

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Creative Commons Licence
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

 

Bibliographic software

It is important that you are organised and keep track of the information you use for your assignment, otherwise preparing your reference list or bibliography will be far more difficult. One way of managing your information is to use bibliographic software.

Bibliographic software allows you to manage all the references you need for your papers, report or thesis by enabling you to keep them in your own personal database or library. It allows you to:

RefWorks is an example of a bibliographic package. The benefits of using RefWorks are:

Many universities make packages like RefWorks accessible via the Library web pages. Glasgow Caledonian University, has a link from our Database A-Z.

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Creative Commons Licence
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

Flikr

What is Flickr?

Flickr is an 'online photo management' system. You can store your digital photos and share them with other people. You can upload photos from your desk top, send them by email or use your camera phone. Flickr also has the facility for you to organise and tag your photos.

Task: Now create your own account in Flickr, add some of your favourite pictures and tag them.

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Creative Commons Licence
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/

Digital curation

What is Digital curation?

Digital curation means organising and storing digital data effectively so that is is readily available for use in the future. This means that it can be easily shared among the research community and so increases the value of your research.

This is especially important if you have used datasets (such as statistics or survey data) in your research. If you have been awarded a research grant, then it is often a condition of the award that the data is freely available to other researchers.

What about your research?

formulae iconWhat data have you used in your research and assignments? How have you stored it? It is sensible to use different storage methods, as one type of storage device may fall out of use or suffer technical failure. CDs can de-laminate and flash drives can become corrupted! Therefore you should back up your data onto more than one type of device and store it in two separate locations, just in case! More data is avialable from the Digital Curation Centre, they have a useful FAQs sheet.

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GCU logoSMILE logo

Creative Commons Licence
SMIRK by Imperial College, Loughborough University and the University of Worcester, modified by Marion Kelt Glasgow Caledonian University is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://www.gcu.ac.uk/library/SMILE/