Using Social Media in your studies

Gather, Store and Share…

Quotes from researchers…

“If I couldn’t use social media I would probably curl up in a hole and die and kiss my research career goodbye!”

Anna Croft: Lecturer, Bangor University

“DropBox is the best thing since sliced bread!” Andy Priestner: Head Librarian, Judge Business School: Cambridge

“Google Reader is a fantastic way to keep track of new papers that are appearing in many different journals, and to follow some of the interesting research blogs that are out there”

Pat Heslop: Professor: University of Leicester

Quotes from researchers…

“Social Media makes me a better researcher because I find stuff out a lot quicker. I now have a network of individuals who I respect and am confident in their work”

Terry Wassall: Lecturer, University of Leeds

“The factors that discouraged me from using social media were time factors. There are too many tools to keep up with, and they are not always useful”

Andrew Coverdale: PhD student, University of Nottingham

What’s out there?

What’s useful?

Gather… RSS, Feed Aggregators

Store …Using the cloud (Dropbox, Evernote)

Share … Blogs and Micro-blogs (Wordpress, Twitter)

Gather

Use RSS to subscribe to "feeds" in order to keep up with news from websites (including blogs).

You can also subscribe to content from specific academic journals, and even your own subject searches!

In order to subscribe to a feed, you need to use an RSS reader. A popular choice is Google Reader

Google Reader

To use Google Reader you’ll need a Google Account

Subscribing to feeds from academic journals

Most useful feature of RSS for Researchers is the ability to track the latest issues of journals : You can do this direct from the journal’s own website Use Zetoc which provides feeds directly from over 28,000 leading peer review publications

Subscribing to feeds via Zetoc will allow you to link to the full-text of articles – Website feeds may not allow this.

To get the best experience on your own computer, you should first install and run the University’s VPN software:http://www.itservices.manchester.ac.uk/vpn/

Using Zetoc

Joint initiative between British Library and MIMAS (University of Manchester).

Allows you to track the latest articles from over 25,000 peer-reviewed publications.

Track top publications such as Harvard Business Review and California Management Review.

Allows you to connect directly to the full-text from Google Reader (Using the Libray Find It Service).

Other useful applications

AmplifyClip, share & spark conversation about excerpts from articles, blog posts, tweets etc. Supports auto-posting to Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, etc.

Read it LaterSave pages to read later with just one click. When you have time, access your reading list from any computer or phone, even without an internet connection!

To keep up-to-date with new applications subscribe to Business Research Plus and MBS’ new Ipad Blog:

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Store… Using the cloud

Cloud services

Using Dropbox

Using Evernote

Share

Bookmarking &Sharing

Blogs

2004 – 3 million blogs2011 – 164 million blogs

Twitter

“Twitter is a valuable resource for academics. If you’re allowing inaccurate stereotypes to deter you, you’re missing out”

Twitter

Twitter Stats: 500 million+ users (100 million last year!) 12 new users every second!

You can ignore 99.999% of users and ignore their tweets by concentrating on people or organisations that interest you!

Twitter is increasingly populated by serious researchers and organisations – Some from MBS!

Example tweets

Highlighting articles / useful information

Re-tweet useful links to your followers

Promote your own blog-posts

Provoke debate (be careful though!)

Using Twitter

@username – Reply. Tweets that start with an @ and then a username is a reply to that user. Use the ‘Reply’ button to do this. Add a ‘.’ (e.g. .@priestlib if you want your own followers to be able to view the conversation

Twitter is REALLY easy to use: Some useful points to remember though:

#tag – Hashtag. Create keywords within your tweets by using # at the start of the word (e.g. #strategy or #marketing). Now people who are searching on these topics will find your tweets and may decide to follow you.

Use Short URLs: Remember you’ve only got 140 characters! http://bit.ly/ http://goo.gl/

libdesk@mbs.ac.uk0161 275 6507

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