All Cambridge University Libraries courses

An informal small group session looking at research databases, referencing skills and examples of previously submitted dissertations.

A hands-on session exploring music databases and bibliographies available for research in Cambridge. This session offers the opportunity to focus on your own specific topic

A tour of the University Library Music Department, including a visit of our closed access materials behind the scenes. We will also give you lots of practical tips on getting the most out of the University Library Music Collections.

This tour will show you how to find your way around the music collections at the University Library. We will provide tips on how to find and use the various materials relating to music, and demonstrate finding aids for notated music collections in the Anderson Room.

A display and short talk about the music collections showcasing the variety within the collections, with some of our most notable and more unusual items on display.

A tour of the University Library Music collections. A short tour principally for non-music students, but with an interest in all things musical! Open to all.

This session will cover how to find historical and current newspapers for research.

The first half will focus on searching and accessing historical newspapers. This includes referencing, copyright restrictions and finding print and digital collections.

The second part of the session will focus on searching and accessing current news, including registering for the FT.com.

Note making (as opposed to note taking) is an active practice of recording relevant parts of reading for your research as well as your reflections and critiques of those studies. Note making, therefore, is a pre-writing exercise that helps you to organise your thoughts prior to writing. In this module, we will cover:

• The difference between note taking and note making
• Seven tips for good note making
• Strategies for structuring your notes and asking critical questions
• Different styles of note making

You will receive the URL for the course in the confirmation email after booking.

This session will provide an opportunity to learn about the Official Publication (OP) collections available to students and researchers in Cambridge. The first part will be an introductory talk on how to find government and official publication material in both print and electronic formats. You can also choose to stay for the second part which will run as a clinic where staff will be available to talk one-to-one about your chosen topics and how to start your literature search.

This class will focus mostly on official documents from the UK, but will also provide general guidance that can be applied to searching for international documents.

Open access long-form scholarship is an increasingly important area of scholarly communication. New business models have been devised to support the publication of open access monographs, while funders continue to implement OA policies for the books that they fund (such as the recently announced UKRI policy). Yet one possible roadblock to a sustainable open access future is the book processing charge. As open access books require significant up-front investment for publishers, BPCs have rapidly become one of the dominant models for funding open access book publication. In the humanities, where funding is limited, BPCs have the potential to make open access a preserve of only those that can afford to pay, potentially excluding junior scholars, unfunded researchers and colleagues from universities outside the Global North. Alternative models are therefore needed for any wholesale move to open access for books.

In light of the recent UKRI policy requirement for open access books, this session will discuss the challenges around open access book publishing and the alternatives to the book processing charge that publishers have developed, highlighting experiments in funding no-fee open access book publishing. It will feature leading experts and practitioners in open access book publishing and a discussion with members of the Cambridge community.

What’s new in Open Access for 2022?

Open Access is a fast moving area and it can be hard to find the time to keep up with the latest developments, especially if you don't work in this area day to day. This webinar offers a brief update on the biggest changes to OA that library staff need to know about. It will looks at changes both within Cambridge and the wider open research world.

Join us for this interactive session and a chance to ask questions of the experts.

Have you wondered how research data is used after it has been shared publicly (as open data)? What are some of the impacts of sharing data and of its subsequent reuse by others? Does the researcher or research group who shared their data openly benefit in any way from its reuse? What are the essential properties of a reusable dataset? In this session on ‘Open data sharing and reuse’ we will explore these questions amongst others via case studies presented by a panel of four University of Cambridge researchers from various fields – neuroscience, political sociology, medical imaging and law. All four have shared their research datasets as open data and had their data reused by others. Presentation of the case studies will be followed by questions from attendees and discussion.

As Open Research becomes increasingly popular across academia, it is easy to feel overwhelmed by the various terminologies, policies, platforms and practices associated with the move to openness. This hour-long session will introduce the main concepts and issues relating to open access, open data and open research more broadly, aiming to give interested researchers a solid base for making informed decisions around opening up their work and how to do this. We will explore the benefits, downsides and possible implications for researcher careers, while ensuring plenty of time for discussion. Participants are encouraged to submit questions for discussion in advance to info@osc.cam.ac.uk. This session will not be recorded.

Research is increasingly a collaborative endeavour that often benefits from the open flow of information. In recent decades, the concept of Open Research has gone from idealistic stirrings to widespread practice. Yet there is still more progress to be made.

In this opening session, speakers will bring perspective from the world of academia, funding bodies, publishing and museums. They will share their rationale and vision for Open Research, with a focus on what it means for our Cambridge community.

In the second half of the session, there will be the opportunity to break into small groups to discuss how Open Research has and will impact your practice.

Open research helps to support key features of research and innovation such as transparency, openness, verification and reproducibility and it also helps to foster collaboration within and across disciplines. Institutional support for suitable infrastructures that underpin research plays a key role in enabling open research practices within the research community. In this session we will provide an overview of the open research programme currently being developed, with a particular focus on infrastructure. This will be followed by a series of short talks showcasing a range of systems and services available within the University, and more widely, to support open research areas such as early publication of research findings following FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable) principles, open peer review, amongst others.

Talks:

Open Research Infrastructure – supporting open research practices at Cambridge (Dr Agustina Martínez and Peter Sutton-Long)

Octopus - the new primary research record for science (Dr Alexandra Freeman)

From Digital Library to Digital Humanities: the creation, curation and reuse of collections-based data (Huw Jones and Andy Corrigan)

Open Access has by now become established in all academic fields, including the arts and humanities, but what about other aspects of Open Research? There is a perception that the language and concepts around OR are driven by the way scholarly communication is practised in the sciences. Based on the 8 Pillars of Open Research and the work of the University of Cambridge’s working group on Open Research in the Humanities, this roundtable will discuss some of the ways in which the principles of OR can be applied to humanities research and how OR can be incentivised and supported, but also what some of the problems might be. Audience participation in the discussion will be encouraged

Do you know what Open Research (OR) is and how it affects your research? This session will address these questions by providing information about what OR is - its definitions, policies, and practices - throughout the lifecycle of a research project. We will explore how OR looks in different disciplines and what restrictions may exist, as well as what Cambridge is doing to address these. This session is intended for researchers and librarians across all career stages and various disciplines.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for all Philosophy students...

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for Architecture undergraduate students...

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for Cambridge foundation year students....

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

New for 2023, an orientation tour for Cambridge Library staff - UL, Faculty or College.

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. This tour will replicate what we show new users during orientation tours. If you have never been to, or used the UL before, it may provide useful information and context for your own library inductions.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for the Mastercard programme

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for Churchill College students....

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for Downing College students....

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.

Orientation tour of the University Library exclusively for Fitzwilliam College graduate students....

The UL is unique: a national, legal deposit library with an amazing collection of around 8 million items - over two million of which you can browse on our open shelves. If that sounds a bit daunting, why not come on a brief orientation tour to help you find your way around? We’ll even tell you what we keep in the famous Library tower ...

Please note this tour does not cover the University's vast electronic and digital collections: to find out more about using these, please see check for courses on our timetable or ask a member of Library staff for help.