News & Blog

Are you looking to save time and become a better researcher? Join us online for Research Tips Tuesdays! This semester we will be offering workshops on breaking down your research topics, using articles to find other sources for your research, understanding basic stats in journal articles and apps that can help you study.

Our first session, Breaking Down Your Research Topic, will take place on January 21, 2020 10:30-11:30 AM. We will explore ways to:

• identify the core concepts related to your research topic
• use those core concepts to find supporting research
• use your topic breakdown to organize your writing

RSVP online at http://guides.ucf.edu/rtt

UCF Libraries, in partnership with the College of Graduate Studies and the Pathways to Success program, offers several graduate workshops each semester.  Check out this semester’s schedule below, and plan to attend and learn more about library research strategies, publishing options, managing sources with citation tools, apps to organize your research life, and more. Registration for the workshops is required through myUCF (Student Center → Graduate Students → Pathways to Success).

Library Research & Literature Review Strategies
What strategies are you using to conduct literature searches for your research or projects? This session highlights effective strategies to locate related sources using citation tracking and search strategies, tips to customize Google Scholar, and options to organize sources and stay updated on publications.

Please bring a laptop to follow along with the presentation. Consider also attending the related topic, Where to Publish: Finding the Right Venue to Publish Your Research that follows this session.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 1/30/20 5:00pm-6:00pm
⋅ Tuesday, 2/25/2020 12:00pm-1:00pm

Library Research & Literature Review Strategies – Online
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Wednesday, 3/25/20 5:30pm-6:30pm

Where to Publish: Finding the Right Venue to Publish Your Research
How do you decide which journals are the best fit for your manuscript? Are there other potential publishing venues that might be a good fit for your research? This workshop covers criteria to consider when planning where to submit your work for publication. We will look at factors like acceptance rates, audience, indexing, cost to publish, and open access, among others. This session is part one of a two-part workshop that explores where to publish and author rights.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 1/30/20 6:00pm-7:00pm
⋅ Tuesday, 2/25/20 1:00pm-2:00pm

Optimizing Your Online Presence
Learn more about evaluating research impacts and managing your online research profile. This session will cover citation metrics & measuring your publishing Impact. Citation metrics provide quantitative data used to evaluate the impact of a scholar’s research. Learn about methods and tools to obtain citation counts and impact data (ISI Web of Science, Google Scholar, and others), and metrics to assist scholars in identifying key journals and notable researchers in your field. The session will also discuss why it’s important to develop an online profile as a researcher, how to promote your work and connect to other researchers, using sites such as ORCID, Research Gate, Academia.edu, PIVOT, Plum Analytics, and Google Scholar.

Please bring your laptop to follow along with the presentation. Consider also attending the related topic, Author Rights: Understanding & Protecting Your Rights that follows this session.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 2/18/20 4:00pm-5:00pm
⋅ Thursday, 3/26/20 2:00pm-3:00pm

Author Rights: Understanding & Protecting Your Rights
Learn to be a savvy author! Do you know that all rights to a work are often assigned to publishers when a manuscript is accepted? Are there other options that allow you to retain the copyright of your work? This workshop will provide an overview of general copyright and what author rights mean to you, as a researcher. We will also explore how these rights may be negotiated when publishing and how you can use your works post-publication. This session is part two of a two-part workshop that explores where to publish and author rights.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 2/18/20 5:00pm-6:00pm
⋅ Thursday, 3/26/20 1:00pm-2:00pm

Endnote & RefWorks: Citing Made Easy!
Citation Management Tools allow you to dedicate more time to research! Join us to learn how to export citations from library databases, organize citations, generate bibliographies, and format citations in a Word document. Endnote & RefWorks can help make managing your references and formatting citations easy! Sessions will cover BOTH products.

Please bring your own laptop if you would like to follow along with the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Tuesdsy, 1/21/20 5:30pm-6:30pm
⋅ Thursday, 1/30/20 12:00pm-1:00pm

Endnote & RefWorks: Citing Made Easy! – Online Sessions
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Monday, 2/3/20 12:00pm-1:00pm
⋅ Wednesday, 2/18/20 6:00pm-7:00pm
⋅ Monday, 3/2/20 12:00pm-1:00pm

Presentation Skills
Does the idea of giving a presentation freak you out? I have good news and bad news. Bad news – presentations are unavoidable in your courses and in your future career path. Good news – presentation skills are something you can easily improve! This session provides tips, tricks, and ideas for how to become a better presenter. There will also be time at the end of the session for Q&A (and practice speaking to a crowd!).

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Thursday, 1/23/20 10:00am-11:00am
⋅ Tuesday, 3/17/20 1:00pm-2:00pm
⋅ Thursday, 4/9/20 10:00-am-11:00am

Presentation Skills – Online Session
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Tuesday, 2/11/20 12:00pm-1:00pm

Planning Poster Presentations
Planning a research poster session? Learn the basics of poster design and tips for editing free PowerPoint poster templates. This session reviews poster elements for layout, graphics, printing, and includes examples of well-designed posters.

Please bring your laptop if you would like to follow along with the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Tuesday, 2/4/20 12:00pm-1:00pm
⋅ Thursday, 3/5/20 5:30pm-6:30pm

Apps to Help Organize Your Research Life
Do you ever wonder if there is a great app out there that you are missing out on? Need help staying organized, taking notes, or need a better way to communicate with classmates over shared projects? Well look no further as this session will introduce helpful and important apps that all grad students should love and use! We will cover organization, project management, reference, and science apps that will keep you at your best while you are in grad school and beyond.

Please bring your mobile device or laptop as we test drive the apps during the presentation.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Tuesday, 1/28/20 1:00pm-2:00pm
⋅ Thursday, 2/13/20 12:00pm-1:00pm

Apps to Help Organize Your Research Life – Online Session
After registering in myUCF, you will receive an email with a link to participate in the online session.
⋅ Wednesday, 3/4/20 5:00pm-6:00pm

Introduction to Data Documentation
Join us for an introduction to data documentation and metadata. Learn basics about research data, datasets and data documentation for data sharing, re-use and long-term preservation. This session introduces best practices and recommendations for documenting research data, including types of documentation needed, appropriate data formats, kinds of materials to be collected in the research lifecycle, and especially data documentation at study level and data level. The session also includes real-world examples and a discussion of data tools for data documentation, such as NVivo for qualitative data and SPSS for quantitative data.

Graduate Student Center, Trevor Colbourn Hall, TCH 213
⋅ Monday, 2/10/20 3:00pm-4:00pm

Finals are almost here, Knights! If you’re stressing and need a chance to relax, join the John C. Hitt Library for one of our stress relief events!

Coloring and Puzzle Tables
Wednesday, December 4 – Wednesday, December 11
Main floor

Try your hand at a large puzzle or chill while coloring Knugget and friends (or on the table itself).

CrafTea
Friday, December 6
11:00 am – 1:00 pm
LIB-223

Taste test different teas while crafting your own teacup cozy.

Read and Relax
Tuesday, December 10
11:00 am – 3:00 pm
LIB-223

Read and relax in the quiet with soft lighting.

Need some holiday break reading?

UCF Libraries will be hosting a Take a Book, Leave a Book event on Monday, November 25 (the week of Thanksgiving break) from 11 am to 1 pm. The UCF community is welcome to browse the selection and take a book that they find interesting. If you would like to leave a book, you can do so but it is not required.

 Early drop off location for leaving a book is the Research & Information Desk located on the 2^nd floor of the John C. Hitt Library.

The UCF Libraries’ Special Collections & University Archives is pleased to announce the Beyond the Books: History of the UCF’s Library exhibit, which looks at the history of the University of Central Florida’s John C. Hitt Library including major renovations – both past and future – along with a selection of library resources.

When the University of Central Florida (then Florida Technological University) opened in 1968, the library was the only completed academic building on campus. As the student body grew, so did the campus. As campus grew, the library was renovated to better suit the needs of students. The first major renovation occurred in 1982-1984 and included money for the acquisition of artwork. With the addition of new UCF campuses, partnerships, and online learning, the library expanded resources for students needing to access materials remotely. The materials in this exhibit are from UCF Libraries’ Special Collections & University Archives.

The exhibit was curated by Elisabeth Jimenez, Special Collections & University Archives employee, and runs from November 2019 to January 2020. The exhibit is in the Special Collections & University Archives’ exhibit space located on the 5th floor of the John C. Hitt Library.