News & Blog

We hope all our students are adjusting to online learning and have everything they need to complete their semester. But we also hope everyone remembers to make time for some fun leisure activities too!

We originally had planned to host an Introduction to Book Binding workshop to celebrate National Library Week. It was a very popular workshop last year and we’re thankful our Book Conservator, Chris Saclolo, put together these instructions on how to create your own book from the comfort of your home.

Introduction to Bookbinding

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Happy National Poetry month! Did you know that the United States has an official poet?

What is the United States Poet Laureate?

The Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry — the full title — is the nation’s official advocate for the worth and impact of poetry. The Poet Laureate is appointed annually by the Librarian of Congress and may be elected for a second term. This position was established in 1937 under a different title with slightly different duties, funded through a private endowment from Archer M. Huntington. The current title was adopted in 1986.

(more…)

Welcome to National Poetry Month!

The Academy of American Poets, inspired by the success of Black History Month and Women’s History Month, created National Poetry Month in 1996. It is the largest literary celebration in the world and UCF Libraries are proud to do their part.

UCF Libraries have gathered suggestions to feature 12 books of poetry that are currently in the UCF collection. These works represent the wide range of favorite poetry books of our faculty and staff.

Since we are in strange times and realize that access to the physical books chosen by the Libraries is extremely limited at the moment, we have also crafted a list of digital poetry works that can be read from the comfort of your home: Poetry reading digital edition.

Featured Bookshelf: National Poetry Month

For the month of January, UCF Libraries’ featured bookshelf presents books from our Knight Reads section. Located on the 2^nd (main) floor of the John C. Hitt Library, this featured display is just a small sample of our abundant collection of popular fiction and nonfiction reading. There are Knight Reads collections in both the John C. Hitt Library and the Rosen Library.

To see a full list of the featured titles with descriptions, click on the link below.

January Featured Bookshelf: Knight Reads

These books typically get checked out pretty quickly so if you notice that a book you want is checked out, you can always complete an ILL request so you can borrow it from another library. Check out the link below. More often than not, we also carry another copy of a Knight Reads book in our general collection so feel free to scope out the catalog as well.

How to place an ILL Request, or an Interlibrary Loan

Happy reading!

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