Maria Bell (Course Convenor), Academic Support Librarian; Dr Jane Secker, Copyright and Digital Literacy Advisor, Centre for Learning Technology; Clive Wilson, Academic Support Librarian.

First and second year research students and MSc Social Research Methods students.

MY592 is a six week programme of 2 hour workshops which aims to develop students' research skills and introduce the essential sources and tools when undertaking research, and the skills required to use them. It is run by the Library and Centre for Learning Technology and is ideal for research students undertaking an extensive literature search and review.
Students receive detailed advice on the most appropriate Library resources for their research topics. Materials, online activities and assessment will be available in Moodle to support the teaching.

The first session provides a course overview and will explore literature searching principles, tips and techniques for your literature reviews. We will consider how to devise appropriate search strategies and terms. Discover how to identify and use relevant online resources for your subject. These will include IBSS, Scopus and the Social Science Citation Index and further subject specific resources. We will look at how to start managing the literature that you find and setting up alerts and saved searches.

This workshop discusses the range of content available via the web, contrasting the strengths and weaknesses of web-based research, including: comparing advanced features of search engines such as Google; finding relevant scholarly literature on their research topic; contrasting bibliographic database and specialist search engines with internet search engines and discussing the appropriate merits of each valuating material on the internet using standard criteria. You will also have a chance to set up alerts and a feed reader to enable you to keep up to date with wealth of online information.

This session examines a number of specialist search engines to locate research publications appropriate to your topic. We will discuss the concept of 'open access' materials and demonstrate how to locate these materials. We will use databases such as EThOS and Index to Theses for finding theses and specialist search engines to locate conference and working papers.

This session examines the value of primary sources including newspapers, official publications, archives and sources of data. You will learn how to identify and find the key primary sources for your topic and how to use these specialist materials. For example, researchers need quantitative datasets will be able to explore the major data archives available from LSE's extensive Data Library.

Session five covers good practice techniques when citing and referencing in your thesis and other written academic work. You will explore some of the tools available to save time and manage your research materials such as EndNote, Mendeley or Zotero all of which can be used to store your references and enable you to create instant consistently formatted bibliographies in Word. You will examine the different features of these citation management tools and which will work for you.

Your initial literature review is only the start of the research process. In this session you will have a chance to review the materials you've found to date and refine your searching. We'll also consider how you might start to extend your academic network and explore appropriate ways of sharing some of your early research findings. We'll look at how to find suitable conferences or forums for disseminating your research, the use of email discussion lists, blogs and how to build a suitable web presence to support your future work.
Follow on workshops on using EndNote, archives and data sources will be scheduled for those students who wish to develop a more in-depth understanding of these tools and resources.

Six two hour classes will be held weekly, and students are expected to attend all sessions in order to develop their information literacy skills. MY592 will run in both the Michaelmas and Lent terms and in the Summer term subject to demand. Dates and times will be advertised at the start of each term. Note that not all sessions will last for 2 hours but this will allow for individual contact time at the end of classes with class tutors.
If you only wish to attend an individual workshop, consult the Training classes offered by the Library and the Centre for Learning Technology on the LSE Training and Development System.

Places on the entire programme can be booked using the LSE Training and Development System.

This course is non-examinable.