Help with Referencing and Bibliographies

Do you need some help with Harvard Referencing your work for College?

Perhaps you want to double-check how to incorporate quotations or paraphrasing or author-date citations in your work. Maybe you are unsure how to organise your Reference List or Bibliography (indeed, maybe you're confused about the difference between the two).

In the Harvard Referencing pages of this blog, we've put together a number of resources to try and help you get to grips with the Referencing standard used at Newcastle College. These include:

• Presentations ranging from a quick overview to more insights into more advanced rules.
• Handouts, including our Referencing & Bibliographies booklet and examples of Harvard in action.
• Online Guides showing worked examples of how to construct references for pretty much any source that you might use.
• Links to software that can construct Harvard References for you.

Click here for the full collection, and if you have any other suggestions for resources; or come across any particular problems when referencing your work, then don't hesitate to get in touch.

Making the Web Work for You 2 - IFTTT

Would it be useful to you to automatically get an email everytime your favourite website posted an update about a subject you are researching?

...Or to automatically get sent a txt if rain were forecast?
...Or to automatically have your email attachments backed-up on Dropbox?
...Or to automatically update your Facebook picture whenever you change your Twitter avatar?
...Or to automatically calendar Tweets?
...Or to automatically get an alert whenever you are mentioned online?

Here's an online service that can do all of this and much much more!

Making the Web Work for You 1 - RSS

Here's something that could completely change the way you use the internet.

Bargain books for e-book readers

I posted about the free content that you can get from Amazon Kindle a few weeks ago, however there are bargains to be had if you have other branded e-book readers too...:

Free Printer Credits

The P-Counter Machine

Good news for those of you with lots of work to print out soon - all Newcastle College Students will get 50 free Printer Credits after the Easter Break, meaning you could print off 50 sides of A4 paper in black and white for free.

In the meantime, if you are running low on credits and need to print anything off this week, you'll need to top up your account.

Topping up is easy. We charge 2p per page and you can either pay at one of the Library counters (at Main Library, Art Library, PITS or SPACE), or use the P-Counter Machine beside the IT desk in the Main Library. Just log on to it as if you were logging on to Blackboard, insert your coins (this machine does NOT give change!!!), hit the silver "finish" button and wait for the flashing lights to turn red.

Qualitative Data Analysis

Though Qualitative research gives a truer indication of why people behave in a certain way, or believe the things that they do, analysing people’s ideas, opinions or answers to interview questions can take longer than working with the numerical statistics that get generated by Quantitative research.

If you have applied Qualitative methods in your Dissertation or Research Project, you first need to mould the information into a usable format, before you can remark upon it, or draw any conclusions from it.

This flow diagram shows a process that might help...:

Using MS Excel for Quantitative Data Analysis

(By Get Down on Flickr. Creative Commons)

If you've undertaken Quantitative Data techniques (such as questionnaires) in your Research Project or Dissertation, you may well have been left with lots of tally charts, Likert Scales or assorted ticks and crosses on handouts that you need to try and make some sense out of.

For any advanced statisticians out there, the best software to use to analyse numerical data is SPSS which is ridiculously expensive and not easy to use (a free trial version is available, though this expires after 14 days).

Alternatively, there is a Freeware version (cheekily called PSPP, it performs most of the same functions, but at no cost to you), though again if  you are not familiar with t-tests, anova, linear regression and non-parametric tests this isn't for the faint-hearted!

Luckily, there is a lot you can do with Microsoft Excel to generate and display decent data for you to analyse and cross-reference in order to unveil and support the findings of your research. These interactive tutorials help you master some of the advanced techniques for yourself.

Dissertation Writing Style

There are established rules about the language, grammar and style that should be used in Dissertations or Extended Project at Newcastle College…: 

Making MS Works WORK on Newcastle College PCs

Many computers come with Microsoft Works software pre-loaded on them.

This is a perfectly adequate word processing (and spreadsheets) package that avoids you having to shell out lots of money to buy the Microsoft Office suite (though check out this special offer if you DO want the latest versions of Word, Excel, Powerpoint, etc).

The problem is that Microsoft Works is not compatible with Newcastle College computers. All is not lost though - we can convert the files at the PITS desk in the Main Library, ... or you can cure the problem for yourself....:

Opening Open Office on Newcastle College PCs

If you got a new PC, tablet or laptop recently, you may need some office software (like a word processor, spreadsheet or presentation tool) to run on it.

Rather than spending a fortune on the latest Microsoft Office suite, you can get some equivalent, open source software which does exactly the same job to exactly the same quality for FREE from OpenOffice.org.

The bad news is that you can't normally open anything that you create on these programs on Newcastle College computers... unless you use this trick...:

Embedding Youtube videos in Powerpoint

One of the questions our Brians, the IT Customer Service staff at PITS, get asked most often is how to embed a Youtube video into a Powerpoint presentation.

The method is actually slightly different, depending upon what version of Powerpoint you have.

Referencing Revisited

Further to the earlier posting about Harvard Referencing, here's a Slideshare presentation with some worked examples (and appalling puns - sorry!) covering some of the more advanced rules and percularities of the referencing Standard that we use at Newcastle College...:

More resources to help you with Harvard Referencing are available here.

Renew Online

You can extend the loan period of items you have borrowed from Newcastle College Library by renewing online.

Simply go to http://library.ncl-coll.ac.uk/, use the Library Catalogue link in the Library pages of NCG Online, or click on the Library Catalogue logo at the foot of this blog; then log in using your usual Newcastle College Username (eg 's' + your Student Number); the Password is "12345" (unless you have changed this for yourself).

Logging in to the Library Catalogue

  

Click the word "Loans" in the left-hand menu or, from the Home Screen, double-click "Current Loans" in the My Portal Summary section beneath the Search Box....:

The Renew Icon

When the list of items you have out comes on screen, click on the green "Renew" button next to the items you wish to keep for longer.

The new return date will be listed in the "Due Date" column.

The Renewal Screen

NB: You cannot renew items that are overdue or have been reserved by other Library Users.

Click here to get automatic reminders of when you need to renew your library items.

A guide with full details of our Online Catalogue's functions and features can be downloaded here.

Harvard Referencing

Here's a cut-down version of the Referencing and Plagiarism presentation that I'm currently delivering to classes around Newcastle College. It explains all about Author-Date Citations and Reference Lists/Bibliographies, features some worked examples and contains at least two dreadful jokes.



If you think it would be useful for me to come and do the full version of this presentation with your class, please tell your tutor to drop me an email. Alternatively, if you are having trouble with referencing, then feel free to get in touch with me yourself. My contact details are at the foot of this blog.

More resources connected with Harvard Referencing are available here.

Tips and tricks for searching with Google

If you are researching on the web, then you'll probably use Google, the biggest and best known Internet Search Engine.

What many people don't know, however, is that there are lots of hidden features and shortcuts that you can use to ensure that you get the best information for your studies quickly and easily.

Watch this video to find out more....: