All Librarians in Training courses

This course is aimed at those faculty librarians who purchase their own ebooks and those who may be interested to start purchasing their own. The course will introduce librarians to our ebook suppliers, including ebook license models, how user-friendly they are and how to identify them on the supplier platforms. We will also look at Digital Rights Management (DRM) and ebooks; what are the implications for users, and why we should try to buy DRM-free ebooks where possible. We will demonstrate searching, interpreting results and purchasing ebooks from the main vendor platforms. We will also cover what happens after the ebook order, including creating purchase orders and invoices, cataloguing, and portfolio administration within Alma.

There will be chance to ask questions throughout the session, and an accompanying ebook supplier checklist to take away.

Bewildered by business models? Dubious about DRM? Flummoxed by formats? Come to our ebooks training session where we will try and demystify all things ebook and help you to support your users.

We have re-vamped the content of this session this year, we are not concentrating so heavily on the basics, and will instead introduce some new information on aspects such as troubleshooting, file formats and accessibility.

The presentation part of the course will run for an hour and there is an optional 30 minutes where you are welcome to stay and work through the workbook of practise exercises. In the presentation we will introduce the ebooks@cambridge service, investigate the differences between purchase models, licenses and supplier platforms, and talk about Digital Rights Management (DRM) and ebook formats. We will also demonstrate ways of searching for ebooks in iDiscover and in Alma, how to use/download/print ebooks, and look at the differences between purchased and electronic legal deposit ebooks. We will discuss some common problems reported to the ebooks team, and touch on accessibility issues (including alternative format requests).

After the presentation attendees will be given a takeaway workbook of ebook-related exercises which will give them a chance to familiarise themselves with the breadth of our ebook collections. Librarians from the ebooks Advisory Group will be on hand to help answer any ebook-related questions you may have.

This session is aimed at newer members of library staff and those who would like a refresher on all things ebook.

Most institutions are now using Instagram as way to connect to their readers. However, keeping your feed full of exciting content can be difficult. Luckily, we have a brand new class to help manage your Institution's page. Barney Brown from the University's central Communications Office and Naomi Polonsky of the New Hall Art Collection at Murray Edwards have kindly offered to host a workshop demonstrating how effective Instagram can be as a social platform. As well as talking about the basics they will be delving into why we use Instagram, what makes Instagram a good platform to connect with readers, what tips and tricks they have to maintain a healthy feed, what mistakes they have made and what to avoid as well as deciding on an institution style.

Scopus is a citation and abstract database of peer-reviewed literature that can be used by researchers to determine the impact of specific authors, articles/documents, and journals. It contains over 76 million records in the areas of science, technology, medicine, social sciences, arts, and humanities. In Scopus, it is possible to perform quick searches by document, author, or affiliation. You will learn how to perform basic searches, analyse the results, check affiliation and researcher profiles and consult journal metrics for the over 23,000 titles currently in Scopus.

This session will be delivered by Dr Charles Martinez, Senior Customer Consultant, Elsevier.

Please bring your own device so you are able to follow along with the session examples.

There will be an opportunity to address user case studies in this session. Please send any case studies to Lynne Meehan (lm746@cam.ac.uk) by 17/1/2019.

• Have you started an application for HEA fellowship but have no time to write?

Would you like a day to work on your application with no disruptions?

• Alternatively, have you heard about HEA Fellowship and are considering applying? Are you curious about the benefits of Fellowship and which level (AFHEA, FHEA, SFHEA) best suits your experience? Would you like help brainstorming evidence for your application?

• On 10 December, Librarians in Training are sponsoring a day-long writing retreat to work on applications for HEA fellowship. Come be in a room with others experiencing the same pain and just write. We will have writing sprints of about an hour and then a short break. Repeat until the end of the day!

• The retreat will be held at the Institute for Manufacturing on the West Cambridge site in a lovely seminar room with lots of natural light. Coffee/tea/biscuits and will be served in the morning and afternoon (but you’ll need to bring your own lunch or purchase food in the common room or in a nearby café).

• The IfM is large, so if you’d like to discuss HEA fellowship generally or brainstorm aspects of it, we can easily meet up in the common room. Or if there is interest from everyone at the beginning of the day for a short plenary session, we can do that as well.

• You can sign up for just a half-day or both the morning and afternoon sessions. Numbers are limited to 10 people per session.

• You will need to bring your own laptop. Please come a bit early so that we can start at 1.00pm sharp. If you need to arrive later, that is fine. Just please tip toe in and get set up quietly.

Can’t come on December 10th? There will be two more writing retreats for HEA applications in 2019: 22 March and 21 June. Bookings for those sessions will open approximately a month before the date.

• Have you started an application for HEA fellowship but have no time to write?

Would you like a day to work on your application with no disruptions?

• Alternatively, have you heard about HEA Fellowship and are considering applying? Are you curious about the benefits of Fellowship and which level (AFHEA, FHEA, SFHEA) best suits your experience? Would you like help brainstorming evidence for your application?

• On 1 April, Librarians in Training are sponsoring a day-long writing retreat to work on applications for HEA fellowship. Come be in a room with others experiencing the same pain and just write. We will have writing sprints of about an hour and then a short break. Repeat until the end of the day!

• The retreat will be held at the Institute for Manufacturing on the West Cambridge site in a lovely seminar room with lots of natural light. Coffee/tea/biscuits and will be served in the morning and afternoon (but you’ll need to bring your own lunch or purchase food in the common room or in a nearby café).

• The IfM is large, so if you’d like to discuss HEA fellowship generally or brainstorm aspects of it, we can easily meet up in the common room. Or if there is interest from everyone at the beginning of the day for a short plenary session, we can do that as well.

• You can sign up for just a half-day or both the morning and afternoon sessions. Numbers are limited to 10 people per session.

• You will need to bring your own laptop. Please come a bit early so that we can start at 9.00am sharp. If you need to arrive later, that is fine. Just please tip toe in and get set up quietly.

Can’t come on 1 April? There will be one more writing retreat for HEA applications on 21 June.

Led by members of the UL Reference team, this course will explore the varied reasons why readers struggle to find items they need on iDiscover. There will be a chance for you to solve some of the enquiries which are handled by Reference Staff, brush up your own searching skills and discover some lesser known functions of iDiscover.

The UL Reference team will be answering participant questions submitted prior to the course.

Information about the UL’s iDiscover training for readers will also be available.

Please note: Since this session was last offered, web accessibility has become increasingly important. The session has been revised to cover both usability testing and assessing the accessibility of websites.

This session will help you get started with website usability testing. The session will be interactive and activity-based, which will give you a chance to try out some testing and to reflect as a group on the experience. It will also provide you with some tips and tricks that can be used to help you conduct your own usability testing. If you’ve ever wondered how people actually use your library website, or are currently thinking about how to best revamp your Libguides to match the approaches and needs of your users, this one’s for you!

Do you use Instagram for your Library but would like some pointers how to make your posts more creative? This is the masterclass for you. With the help of the Digital Content Unit, you will learn how to construct photographs and videos that grab readers' attention, and to utilise Instagram tools to give you the best results. Please make sure you have an Instagram account set up and remember to bring your phones! We look forward to seeing you there.

Recruiting staff is becoming an increasingly integral part of our role, so knowing how to interview well is a key skill to have in your toolkit. This session aims to share some best practice in order to help you navigate your way through an interview process, resulting in recruiting the best candidate for the role. The session will be interactive, and will dispel some common myths, as well as sharing with you some practical hints and tips to take away. Topics covered in this session range from what questions to ask a candidate at interview (and those to avoid!), note taking during an interview, scoring the candidates and using the right documentation. There will also be an opportunity to ask any burning questions at the end.