All Students

How to study a book before you have it

The wait for a crucial book to become available in the library is frustrating.  Even worse when the library doesn’t have the book at all.

Aside from inter-library loans, buying the book yourself, and other costly or time-heavy options, what other options do you have in the meantime?

photo by Newton Free Library

photo by Newton Free Library

To Do: Dissertation has some great tips on what to do while you wait for that book to become available.

But it got me thinking about others ways to the book that may work in your favour.  Here are a few ideas that might land you more access to a book than you think you have:

  • Check publisher’s website for excerpts and sample chapters – Some publishers are great at making PDF samples available to download.  You may get instant access to the Introduction, first chapter, possibly more.  Even a simple table of contents or index is a helpful head start on your research.
  • Check library online databases for books in electronic format – Don’t just check the library shelves.  An increasing number of books are now available online.  Services such as Cambridge Books Online provide a huge range of books at your fingertips.  Find out if your library has access.  If not, ask if they can get a trial.
  • Use Google Books – It’s not just Google Scholar that can help your research.  With Google Books, you can look through the pages of many books as a preview.  And the previews can be extensive.  Combine that with the ability to search for specific terms within each book and you may not even need to track down the physical copy of the book at all!
  • Use Amazon “Look Inside” – An alternative to Google Books, Amazon have their own preview function for a large number of books.  Again, you can search within the book and get busy with the research straight away.  However, it looks like Amazon may start charging for this feature soon.
  • Play Google and Amazon off with each other – Online previews are limited and don’t display all pages.  Rightly so.  You’re not meant to read entire books with the services.  However, when researching, you may find a specific page is excluded.  If both Google and Amazon have a preview available, that missing page on one resource may be there to view on the other.
  • YouTube talks – Why wait to read what the author wants to say when they may have said a lot of it in a talk or lecture?  By searching for the author (and maybe even book title) in YouTube, you may stumble upon directly relevant content for your research.  It’s another worthwhile reference to add to your bibliography too!
  • Read reviews – All sorts of texts get reviewed, not just bestsellers.  Reviews can give a breakdown of a book’s main ideas, flaws and coverage.  A Google search for book title and author and the word ‘review‘ should bring up newspaper reviews.  You can also check Times Higher Education.  It’s worth checking Google Scholar or journal databases for the title and author too, which should point you toward scholarly reviews and even related papers by the same authors.
  • Search for author details – Personal websites, university web pages, Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc…  All these can give further detail on the individual and their background, as well as other literature they have produced.  You may not have the book, but you may uncover key opinions and similar texts to chew on.

Don’t let the wait for a book stop you from getting on with your reading and research.  In the unlikely event that you find absolutely nothing after these searches, you can still go back to those helpful tips from To Do: Dissertation.

Don’t Plagiarise it. Remix it!

Academics have been remixing since forever.

You cannot move forward without taking from what is already behind you.

Yet remixing is different from plagiarising.  Academics reference the work they’re using and explain how they reached the detail they’re presenting.

photo by Thomas Hawk

photo by Thomas Hawk

There is a common misconception amongst students that you shouldn’t reference too much, because it looks like you haven’t done any thinking yourself.  But the more you refer to, the broader your research has been. Your scope widens as you read more, leading to more citations.

A high number of references is a healthy sign.  Those references have to be relevant, mind!

As you bring all these works together, you are creating a brand new work.  Remix. Mashup. Collaborate. From all this comes your own unique work.  You rely on others to make your own mark.

Coursework is a continuation of other people’s work, full of quotations, and full of ideas.  Even a groundbreaking, brand new finding/viewpoint must interact with previous research.  And each interaction requires an explanation of where it came from.

Additionally, if you have an opinion and want to back it up, it’s acceptable to find similar arguments elsewhere.  I spoke to one student who said they kept having to change their conclusions because they were the same as someone else’s view.  But there’s no harm in holding a similar view.  It’s just as natural to agree with others as it is to disagree with them.  Agreements in academia are helpful, because it’s material to back up your arguments.  It would be more difficult to back something up if everyone else disagreed with you!

Look at enough journal articles and you’ll start to see exactly how much academics manage to reference throughout their writing.  They don’t leave references out through fear of looking unoriginal.  When they discuss what has gone before and refer to previous findings, they are still creating a brand new work.

Your essays aren’t always unique research projects or a demonstration of new findings.  You may simply be discussing the merits of a statement or exploring a particular concept.  In doing so, your job is to cover as much ground as possible through primary resources and secondary material.  Should you find opinions that go against what you want to argue, bring that up too.  Explain why you don’t agree and back up with even more references on top of your own findings.

Next time you see an academic paper where the bibliography takes up the same number of pages as the article itself, hopefully you’ll understand why this happens!

It’s bad to plagiarise.  It’s great to remix!

Your achievements are stepping stones.

Earlier this month, I was listening to Phill Jupitus co-presenting a breakfast show on student radio.  I was listening out of curiosity.

photo by Andy McMillan

photo by Andy McMillan

Lucky I did tune in, because I also got to hear Jupitus in conversation with James Ricci, president of Bournemouth University Students’ Union.

Ricci mentioned that being involved in SU and university activities is helpful to a graduate CV in an age when a degree alone isn’t qualification enough to enter the job market convincingly.

He’s absolutely right.  So many people go to uni now that you have to do more than pass a degree course for employers to show an interest.

You don’t have to be president of a Students’ Union in order for your CV to shine, but you do need to show your achievements over the course of your degree.  Yes, you studied for a few years, but what else did you do?

Even accounting for the hours spent on independent study, there’s a lot of time left over.  Take away regular (but not TOO regular) leisure time and there should still be room to stand out.  Whatever your subject is.

By ‘stand out’, I don’t mean like a sore thumb.  Not unless that’s one of your endearing qualities…!

You should volunteer, participate in activities, have stories that identify you as a unique person, and so on.  Through this, you’ll notch up various successes worthy of mention.

Success isn’t limited to gold medallists, elected SU officers, student leaders, and so on.  Any achievement is a stepping stone that you should be proud of.  Possible achievements and activities worth mentioning include:

  • Clubs/Societies you’ve joined;
  • Clubs/Societies you’ve made a difference in;
  • Clubs/Societies you’ve helped set up yourself
  • Part-time employment;
  • Online achievements that you founded, such as non-personal blogs, websites, professional networks, etc.;
  • Sporting achievements;
  • Voluntary stints;
  • Uni events you assisted in (paid or not);
  • Senior Student and outreach roles;
  • Charity work;
  • Relevant trade associations & professional groups you’re an active member of;
  • Campaigns you played a part in (unless controversial);
  • Personal hobbies & activities that go beyond casual interest (unless controversial 😛 ).

Three achievements stand out in particular in my own student past:

  1. I was elected a Final Year Representative;
  2. I was a Senior Student for a year;
  3. I was a founding member of an English Society.

I mention these not because I did them for my CV.  I’ll be honest, I wasn’t thinking much about it at the time.  I did these things because I wanted to.

The student representative position was mentioned in passing to me.  It sounded interesting and I felt it would enable me to see (and act) ‘behind the scenes’, as well as speaking on behalf of fellow students.  The Senior Student position was a paid position and it helped me take up something more relevant, useful and exciting to me than a part-time job.  It also meant I could live on campus on my final year with Freshers.  I got to experience the first year again AND tuck in to my dissertation.  Win!  As for the English Society, my Academic Advisor suggested it to me and a few friends.  We liked the idea, so we started the ball rolling.  It wasn’t huge at first, but we managed minor successes, and the society grew in subsequent years.  If it wasn’t for an initial push, there would have been nothing.

So I can mention these achievements to highlight various responsibilities and actions, yet the intention wasn’t just to look better on paper.  You’re either in a position where you’ve already got some achievements worth mentioning, or you’ve got the time to experience more before you graduate.

What could you mention?  Think hard.  Something you may not consider an achievement may be more important than you think.  If you’re still left struggling, it’s not too late.  Start building a portfolio of achievements today.  As I said just a couple of posts ago, “You have the power to stretch out wherever you want“.

Students, Know Your Rights!

In light of news that a student did not own the copyright to her dissertation, it pays to be aware of your rights.

You may be asked to sign away the copyright and ownership of your work when you begin studying.  This could be through signing an intellectual property (IP) release. Your work may no longer strictly be considered your work.

photo by threephin

photo by threephin

All institutions have different rules.  Some let you keep all rights while others want you to give up ownership.  Students are not properly briefed on this in most cases.  The strange situation generally leads to no issues, but that doesn’t mean there’s no problem in this.

I recommend you do the following things:

  1. Don’t sign any document/contract/agreement unless you understand what you’re signing.  If you don’t understand, question it.  It’s hard (if not impossible) to later argue that you didn’t realise what you were signing.  However, if the understanding is fundamentally changed or the contract is simply unfair, the contract can be argued and could be worth nothing.
  2. Check your university’s IP policy.  If you’ve already signed away rights, it’s best you know.  Even if you haven’t, it’s best you understand how the university regards work that you consider your own.

Due to the recent case mentioned above, I question whether universities should be granted an individual, unique say in regulations.  Surely it would be reasonable, easier to understand, and in the interests of students for the issue of copyright and ownership to be made standard across all institutions?

There is an ethical point in this particular case and I don’t have enough information to understand whether or not large parts of the student’s work was used without enough attribution to the author.  The author was apparently credited as the third author on the paper, but was this enough?  Is this even relevant?

Some people argue this is all standard practice.  I don’t think that’s the point.  Deeming something standard practice doesn’t make it reasonable.  Until a case like the one above gets properly tested in court, I fear there won’t be a proper resolution to the problem.

Whatever the score, make sure you’re in the know.  If you have a choice, don’t automatically sign away your rights.