Explore #WeAreOCA
Skip Navigation
The main reason to seek out opportunities such as these is that it helps you keep up to date with current thinking (around whatever the subject matter is) and exposes you to new ideas that you may not have thought about before.
Read More
Having joined Open College of the Arts at the start of the year, it felt high time for a proper introduction! I’m Richard, OCA’s brand new Librarian. Having stumbled into libraries by accident as a Biochemistry graduate, my career has spanned across a number of settings in Further and Higher Education and I couldn’t be more excited to bring everything to this role and help make the library make sense for you!
Read More
A Win-Win situation: citation software… What would you say if you were offered less work, better-focused research, easier and quicker writing, better accuracy of citations and bibliography and everything as neatly organised as a series of music playlists? Okay, who wouldn’t say yes? However, this is a post about one of the most boring topics […]
Read More
Your research folder is a place – physical or digital – where you’ll store any scanned/photocopied essays, articles, notes and any other material that might be relevant to your course. If using a digital research folder remember to back it up – e.g. a USB stick (don’t rely on this) or external hard drive, email, cloud drive etc.
Read More
What is plagiarism? Plagiarism means deliberately or accidentally using someone else’s work or ideas as if they were your own. Work means any intellectual output, and typically includes text, data, images, sound or performance and includes material downloaded from electronic sources. Deliberately plagiarising work whilst you are at OCA can have very serious consequences, which is why it’s important to follow good academic practices and to reference your work properly.
Read More
Continuing from May’s Ask the Librarian blog that discussed how to find the right content online, lets next discuss what you should do once you have completed your first search for research.
Read More
Having Emma and the students talk around my project, helped me consider it from other viewpoints and look at other options. This has greatly helped me to think about what I’m doing for the project and will inform the direction this will take through the rest of the degree.
Read More
Although some of the reading was quite heavy going, we were able to pick out the salient points and find quotations that resonated with our own experience, ideas or concerns or stimulated new thinking.
Read More
When using library catalogues or databases you need to pick your search terms (keywords) carefully. Search engines and library databases are not intelligent and will match up words without considering their meaning.
Read More
Want to maximise your access to research? Here are six open access resources that are sure to help you.
Read More