The first ever funny story about Peer Review.

This morning on the Today programme I heard a story that made me laugh.

A serious academic journal called 'Environmental Microbiology' has published a whole list of comments that have been written by experts engaged in peer-review. For anyone new to this term, peer-review is a process that authors go through to have their reports published in high quality academic journals. It's like being at school and having your essay marked by the smartest kid in class.

If you're a student who's received some brutal feedback from a lecturer recently have a look here and see how the professionals do it! Some people are very hard to please!

Happy birthday YouTube.

YouTube is officially 5 years old.

Blimey. Is that all? It does seem to have been around longer than that.

Below is probably my favourite video ever from YouTube. It's by an amazing man called Michael Wesch, a college professor who writes about how technology changes society. Now take 4 minutes 33 seconds out of your day and click PLAY.

Newsbank.

Have you ever wished you could search newspapers for articles on any subject?

Well you can.

We have a fulltext database that is just newspaper articles, and it's pretty easy to use.

Have a look here to log in and see what's available.

And let me know if you find anything useful!

What else are you doing when you're writing your assignments?

I've been talking to students recently about the dangers of splitting their attention whilst trying to write essays. People readily admitted to emailing, watching TV online, Facebooking, downloading music, tweeting and playing games whilst writing assignments.

Farmville seemed to come up quite often too! Have a look here at what Stephen Poole (one of my favourite writers) thinks of Farmville. It contains one swear word so you've been warned!

Don't be surprised if I continue to ask you what else you do when you're supposed to be writing essays. I find the whole subject fascinating and I promise not to be judgemental. This is mostly because it'd make me a big hypocrite as I too am very bad at sticking to one task for longer than 10 minutes.

Have a look here at the original article from by Nick Carr which first introduced me to the dangers of dividing my attention to distraction. It's brilliant.

Al

Society Guardian.

I know that buying a daily newspaper is fast becoming a thing of the past because most newspapers are free online.

The Guardian has a particularly good online section for social science students called 'Society Guardian'. In the paper edition it appears on a Wednesday.

Have a look here to get a taste of what it covers. It won't do the same job as academic journals, (if you tried writing an essay based entirely on newspaper articles you'd probably fail!) but it offers a good selection of opinion pieces and articles written from the perspective of the client.

You can also set up an RSS feed to the website, enabling the info to come to you. Have a look here for advice on how to set this up.

Do you have a smart phone?

Does your phone support the Android operating system?

If the answer is yes, you can download our new UoB Learning Resources application (or app) from here.

This is a rather smart little application allowing you to easily access your library account via your phone, as well as all the usual options for searching the catalogue.

Feel free to let me know how you get on?

I was taking Evan, my 4 year-old, to pre-school this morning.

This is him. And yes, I know he looks like trouble.

It was lovely to be out on the bike and he was singing to me from his bike seat behind me.

Without warning, the more traditional lyrics to Abba's Mama Mia morphed into, "Mama Mia, you've got a big belly like an elephant because you drink too much wine".

Now I'm not saying he doesn't have a point (although surely, 'Dad, maybe giving the rather delicious Pinot Noir a miss this evening would be beneficial to your overall health?', would have been kinder).

As much fun as it would be to write an essay about obesity based on cutting things children say, I think you'll need some evidence from grown-ups at some point! So if it's statistics you're looking for on anything health related my suggestion would be to look on the NHS website. And if any of you are currently looking for info on obesity in the UK take a look here where you'll find the latest government figures.

And this evening I will be giving the alcohol a miss, although if he thinks he's getting any cake later he'll be very disappointed...

If you're going to tweet then get a good lawyer.

In January a man called Paul Chambers, stuck at a snowed in airport in Nottingham and frustrated with life, wrote a message on Twitter saying that he was going to blow the place sky high if they didn't get their act together.

Unfortunately for Paul, what was obviously a flippant, if unfunny, tweet was intercepted by anti-terrorism bods and within hours he was staring at the walls of a cell.

I mention this because it has serious ramifications for the future of communications on the Web.
In my online past I'm pretty sure I've threatened personal turmoil or trauma towards at least 5 politicians, 8 football referees and everyone who's ever appeared on X-Factor.
I'm also pretty sure none of those people increased their security as a result though.
Because most people who aren't judges and terrorism experts can tell the difference between serious terrorists and frustrated commuters. Even when the words seem similar.

So here's my advice. The next time you're on Facebook or Twitter think twice before writing that you're so frustrated with your husband/wife that you want to kill them, or that the lack of books in the library makes you want to take it out on a librarian.

Not unless you're prepared to spend some time alone in a small area with views that even an estate agent would struggle in making attractive.

You can have a look at Charlie Brooker's reporting of the story here in the Guardian.

YouTube to the rescue

Hi all.

This message is particularly for those students who I've seen recently regarding finding journals via the databases.

I didn't mention this in the lectures but there a quite a few tutorials on YouTube showing you how to conduct searches.

The video below is just one example of what you can find but bear in mind these videos were made by the company who provide the databases, not UoB.



Let me know if these videos help?

Alan

A message for all the students who don't know what they're doing.

That's okay. Neither do I at times.

This is to say a big welcome to all you confused, bewildered and stressed out first years.

We know what it's like. We've all been through it ourselves.

But it gets better, I promise.

Although it may take a few weeks. But that's also okay as you'll get lots of support.

Very soon I'll see you in class and together we'll begin to find some useful information.

In the meantime, have an explore here at what the Learning Resources webpages have to offer.

Alan

Twitter.

I've now added my Twitter feed to the blog. On the page it's down a bit and left a bit.

I plan to use Twitter to recommend Radio and TV programmes that are related in some way to issues in Applied Social Studies. This means that the links may only work for a limited period. The first of these is a radio 4 programme looking at the subject of 'latch key kids' and touches on the issues of work/life balance, Bowlby's studies of deprivation and childhood independence.

Revise or sleep? Why not do both...

I was watching 'Have I got News for you' on Friday and heard something I thought was worth sharing. It was a story about the 'Sound Asleep Pillow' which is a special pillow to which you can attach an MP3 player. The story claimed that students were using the pillow to listen to dictated revision notes whilst sleeping. The Student Times also ran an article looking into this.

Now, I'm not claiming you immediately go and spend money on this thing but just maybe dictating some notes for your MP3 player might prove beneficial.

After all, it has to be better than ending up like this.

Social Care TV

You may have heard of The Social Care Institute for Excellence.

But for any of you who haven't it's a website featuring all kinds of information on every aspect of Social Care.

There's an open access database which you can search by topic .

It also has a collection of videos called 'Social Care TV' covering many topical issues within Social Work.

The video below is a short promo for these videos.



This all adds up to a very, very good collection of good quality, free resources.

Follow the link here to look at the full range of videos available.

That feeling of post hand-in joy.

I'm currently working towards a teaching qualification in Higher education.
Yesterday at midnight was a deadline for an essay on assessment so the majority of yesterday was spent knitting and hammering away at writing a piece of work I wasn't ashamed to put my own name to.

At 10pm this looked unlikely.

At 10:30pm when I began deleting more than I was writing it looked about as likely as the tabloid press playing down England's chances in the World Cup.

But with a leisurely hour to spare it was submitted and that delightful post hand-in joy (or PHJ as it's now known) suddenly kicked in.

So to all students who've just handed things in I say congratulations and savour your feeling of PHJ.

And to those of you who are nearly there, I hope you make it with more than an hour to spare.

Jargon: or why a "Dewey interface on the Catalogue" isn't helpful.

The Scene: Park Square Library.
The Characters: Myself and 3rd Year student.

Me: You see the thing about Web 2.0 technology is how much it's opened up the Internet to everyone and now you don't need to have programming skills or knowledge of computer languages and because the start ups are so intuitive you can begin downloading content almost immediately and that's why these new virtual communities for user-generated content are so popular and why they're filling in the need for person to person community interaction.

Student: What's Web 2.0?



Scene ended with me skulking away feeling stupid.

Okay. Let's start again. To anyone I've ever talked jargon at, I apologise. I sometimes make unfair assumptions about what a student may know about an issue, or worse still, I'll use language that is bogged down in geekspeak or technobabble.

So here's the deal: if any of you in my training sessions catch me using jargon put your hand up immediately and let me know in no uncertain terms. It's okay, I can take it.

And for the record - Web 2.0 is any website where visitors can add content themselves. The best current examples are probably Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.
And the student who I blinded with jargon?
She was already using all those sites already.

Why a man at the zoo changed the Internet.

Hands up who knows why the video below is important?



If you said it was the first video uploaded to YouTube then you're spot on and deserve a biscuit.
The astonishing thing is that the video is less than 5 years old.

I'm fascinated by YouTube. I'm fascinated by the fact that people can talk to webcams, I'm fascinated by the notion of a YouTube 'hit' and also by the idea of a 'YouTube community'.

Learning Resources at UoB has produced a series of 60 second videos for YouTube which you can view here. I can't promise you CGI madness but you may find out something new.

That's the thing about YouTube; it can be about research, connecting with people, home videos and teenage boys falling off skateboards. It's only limited by our imaginations.

How to find Social Work research online.

There are a lot of pitfalls you need to be wary of when using the Internet to find research.

I'd put my Top 3 pitfalls as...

1) It will eat up time like you won't believe.
2) You may end up finding material that you're asked to pay for.
3) There will be times when you can't be certain that what you're referencing is reliable.

But it doesn't have to be hard going. There are guides to help you. Here is the Intute guide to how to research the Internet for students of Social Work.

And there are other guides for Social Policy, health and social care and Social research methods.

RSS feeds for beginners.

We know you've got busy lives and when lecturers, librarians and fellow students say, ' You must try this website' or ' You must try this database', that you're not going to have time to try everything.

But what about if the information came to you instead of you having to go looking for it?

That's what RSS (it stands for Really Simple Syndication) does.

If you'd like to know more about how to set up RSS feeds then this video explains it all.

The Internet is quite big.

They don't call me 'The Master of the Understated' for nothing, you know.

I've started to think that the Internet might be around for a while.

I'm 43 and when I'm pondering technological advancement (yes, I really do sometimes...) I find it quite useful to compare the rapid changes in technology with how I've been forced to adapt since leaving school 27 years ago. My secondary school had one (that's 1!!!!!!!!!) computer. And only the clever kids got to touch it. I was not a clever kid. So, unsurprisngly, I decided that computers were not for me and I decided to dig holes and put trees in them instead.

But then I got ideas above my station and decided to go to University. And because I finished in 1998 the Internet was really only in its toddler stages; you know - falling down a lot, limited vocabulary and quite slow and needy. Hence, I managed to avoid technology again.

And then a short 4 years later I started my Masters and every single meaningful thing I did for the course was online. I'd estimate 90% of my research was online, most of the forms I filled in to access resources were online. I communicated with other people on the course via discussion boards. Whereas 4 years previously we'd have met in the pub to discuss projects. Okay, so maybe it wasn't all progress...

So I basically have two points.

1) Considering how fast we've needed to adapt to the juggernaut of new technologies I'm amazed that so few people seem to be freaking out.

2) If you're one of those people who feels they're capable of breaking the Internet into little pieces by just looking at a computer I know how you feel.

If you've read everything above you deserve a reward.

So here's a video showing how big the Internet is.

Respite care for my Dad

I've recently come back from a long weekend on the Isle of Wight with my Dad and sisters.
This was possible due to a program of respite care that my dad needs as he's the main carer for my mum, who has dementia. My dad is in his 80's, is partially blind and has emphysema. I know, I know. I've been told I'm as stubborn as he is, but that seems impossible given that his mule-like refusal to accept any help resulted in years of soldiering on without respite. This seems to me to be remarkably common and he still feels pangs of guilt at needing help.

The issue of respite care was raised in the second electoral debate last week, so I hope it continues to be an issue that is in the spotlight.

This link will take you to a systematic review of the effects of respite care on the frail elderly, published in 2009.

Here are some photos of our trip featuring a lizard, a red squirrel and my Dad and sisters.

This is me.

Blimey. Where do I start?

I'm new at this but I have plans for this blog which I hope will make it worth your time to come back regularly. My name is Alan and I'm a librarian. And I'll blog about being a librarian in applied social studies. This will include entries about new developments at the University, new technology that excites me and other things that I think students should be made aware of.

But I'm also a student myself so at times I'll want to share my experiences of being on the other side of the educational fence. And then there's everything else! When I talk to students one thing that nearly always comes up is how to fit everything into our busy lives. If you're a student, you constantly make sacrifices and I'm no different. We do it to achieve things.

So I may well talk about my children, my inability to grow leeks, why I stay up until 3 am playing on the xbox and why I'm already getting excited about London 2012.

I hope I manage to entertain and occasionally inform.

Alan