# Welcome to SMIRK Unit
3 - Acquiring and storing
information

- Acquiring information
- Storing information
- Videos
- Bibliographic software
- Flikr
- Digital curation
- Back to main index

######
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.
You can print out full text, save it or email it to yourself and print at a later date.

- To find the items on your list, the first place you should check is the library catalogue.
- If you are searching for a journal article, you can search by article title in Discover, remember to enclose the title in "inverted commas".
- If you are searching using our A-Z journal list, enter the journal title not the journal article title. If the library holds the journal, you need to then check if they have the right volume or issue number.

If the item is not on the library catalogue:

- If it is a government document such as a white paper or an annual report - check the Internet. It may be freely available
- If it is a book or a journal article check the British Library (BL) catalogue. If the item is available you could order an inter-library loan.

######
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.

- If you have a list of resources in electronic format you can store them on your computer. Create a folder in your email, word processor or desktop and use this as a virtual filing cabinet. You keep your information safe and it doesn't take up any room!
- If you have a list of books, journal articles and other items, use bibliographic software (like RefWorks or Mendelay) or start an excel spreadsheet and list the items you think may be useful in future. Keep a note of title, author, publisher, date, ISSN or ISBN and whether it was available locally or had to be requested as an inter-library loan.
- If you are doing a project buy a large stacker box in which to store your paper articles and notes, but remember to keep a list of the items too.

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

######
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.

######
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:

- search easily for a particular reference to which you need to refer
- print or save a list of references
- insert citations into your document and automatically produce a bibliography in whatever style you require

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

- you can import references from databases or text files
- you can build up your own database of relevant references
- you can add correctly formatted citations to word documents
- you can build a reference list

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

####

######
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.

####

######
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?

What 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.

####

######
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/