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Being a PhD Scholar, Befriend Your Librarian?

Being into academics, books and you would be inseparable and you would need them at various times during the course of your PhD. The person who can be of best help to you in the need is the academic librarian of your university. It is hence essential to befriend her. If you still have your … Continue reading “Being a PhD Scholar, Befriend Your Librarian?”

Being into academics, books and you would be inseparable and you would need them at various times during the course of your PhD. The person who can be of best help to you in the need is the academic librarian of your university. It is hence essential to befriend her. If you still have your doubts over what I told you above, find here five ways in which your librarian can be of help to you:

They dig books/information for you: Academic librarians love to do this and they are very good at this as well. They would help to source such material for you which you may find very difficult to arrange yourself. If not all this, they surely can guide you towards doing this effectively.
Give them time and they save yours: Librarians can help you purchase books, order material from sources they already know of. If you consider their human limitations and value their efforts you would give them time and that would save a lot of your time.
Even little information may be enough for them: An academic librarian is a master of his field and for finding the name of that one author or paper, you may have to dig into sources for hours all together, However, even with some brief cues, the librarian may be able to do it even less than half the time and half the frustration caused to you.
They can guide you from the very start: In the beginning of your course, you may not have too much help in the university and you may feel little lost. It isn’t even possible to ask you supervisor about small little details. However, you wouldn’t know that you can always ask your librarian from the very beginning to help you to keep a record of your bibliography. What are the different software in your library? How can you use those software for different purpose such as literature searching or maintaining bibliography etc.?

You can take their help throughout the tenure of your course: From the beginning till the end you would have work at the end of library. From when you start you course and till your VIVA is done the library will be the best place to find you so why not make the best use of the knowledge, expertise and experience of the librarian for making your life easier.

Does Keeping a Doctoral Notebook of Help?

It has been three years into a PhD programme and only recently did I start keeping a PhD note and I must say it has been completely a research changing experience. I hope I make myself clear when I say a PhD notebook. By a PhD notebook, I do not mean a record of meetings … Continue reading “Does Keeping a Doctoral Notebook of Help?”

It has been three years into a PhD programme and only recently did I start keeping a PhD note and I must say it has been completely a research changing experience. I hope I make myself clear when I say a PhD notebook. By a PhD notebook, I do not mean a record of meetings and seminars. By a notebook I mean a handy source to pen down thoughts, ideas and almost anything that comes to mind anytime.

I would not be surprised, if after reading the first paragraph itself you would feel what is new about this and this is something you have already been doing from the beginning itself. I started late and took quite some time to accept the fact that it is ok to have scribbled notebook that may not have all pages interconnect to each other.

Even If You Already Have That Notebook, Find These Tips Handy and Useful:

1. Keep Only One Notebook: You may get multiple ideas during the day and they may be belonging to different components of your research. If you try and follow the task of keeping different notebooks for each type then you end up adding your task of sorting and compilation and taking care of the subset ideas. I have found having one notebook, with me at all times, as a much better idea, from the smallest to the most out of the box ideas, I put them down at one place. I have one notebook to preserve and refer to, at the time of sorting and taking care of documents.

2. Carry It Along Everywhere: the best of thoughts and ideas come at the most unexpected of places and times. If you do not carry it with you everywhere, you would defeat your entire purpose of keeping a notebook as you may end up using pieces of paper and they would be difficult to preserve and compile. It is easy to always keep a notebook with you handy. Make it your partner in your research journey.

3. Do Read Them Again: This is the last tip but certainly a very effective tip. Going back to read your notes from time to time may be a great idea. When you have a lot of pages built up, it may not be able to build up the connection with all that you wrote a few days back. To be able to maximize the connectivity and retention with your notes, it is important to read and re read them , even if just quickly, from time to time to be able to get the best out of them and use them I your research for what you actually thought to use it for.

Does Blogging of Your Doctoral Help?

How good an idea it is to post about research that is work in progress? In my opinion, there are surely some good reasons to do so and that is the reason that I often interrupt my normal flow of writing with research posts of my own research from time to time. I believe it is all the more important when you research involves qualitative work involving people. I would like to specifically discuss few reasons why I think it is very important to not leave an opportunity to blog your research:

(1) It becomes a record keeping source of your work: It is a very precise and if you write “everyday” then a very straightforward day wise account of your activity where your key points are mentioned in a very concise and crisp manner.
(2) Means to self-discipline: Blogging is a means to self-discipline. Often we plan to jot down our notes at the end of the day and eventually then procrastinate it for some other day. Here, when you will be committed to blogging, a necessary self-discipline would systematize things for you.
(3) It is more organised: Blogging your days activity, taking cues from your notes is away to organised the sketchy notes into more details but the extraneous information that may not be of use in the later stage can be deleted.
(4) Get more involved participants: It is a wonderful platform to share information with the other participants in your research so that they are also able to track your work and their role in it.
(5) Initiates conversation: When you put your blog online, you create opportunity to invite opinions and feedback. The relevant and constructive inputs can be used to improvise your work. With notes that are confined only in the notebook, a responsive conversation can never be initiated thus the scope for development of content gets very limited.
(6) Ignites new ideas: Writing about your work and re reading about it may give you more ideas and better way through which you can add value to your work.

So, what are you waiting for? If you have not started to blog your research activities yet, don’t wait any more. May be in my next blog I will give you some tips on creating effective blogs.

Google Books as a Source to Search for Free Books for PhD?

Going to the library ain’t easy. Or rather, it is very difficult. Firstly, you got to go there physically fighting out all the hurdles of commuting, weather, health, time and many others. To add to it you have to move along with your entire Jing bang of laptop, notes, books so that the time you spent there actually becomes productive. Hours spent in the library on daily basis can actually get depressing and may even challenge the smile of the most optimistic and cheerful of persons. For decades all together, this has been the only alternative with researchers and however mundane the task be, they have had to be doing this to be able to do their research. Blessed are those who are researchers of today’s time. They needn’t physically move out to the library for research. Rather the library has come to their door step. Google books give access to a whole lot of books online. It is simple easy and free. I suppose, it does not give access to the most latest of stuff, but for a dissertation sufficient content can be extracted from the net. Sometimes, Google Books does not give access to full books but eve getting to read few pages can help to solve the purpose you need to derive from the book.

I wonder, how many of the new scholars would understand the benefit of this wonderful advantage of Google Books which allows you to search for this specific content within the book so you need not hunt the entire book looking for a particular paragraph. Google does that for you and helps you to save your time and energy for other mundane tasks associated with PhD.

The present generation researchers, in my opinion should be indebted to technology, specifically Google for giving the simple techniques through which they can decorate their thesis with relevant citations without having to face the ordeal of visiting a library day after day.

Does a Doctoral Researcher Imagine Beyond the Possible?

Most of the research scholar’s time is gobbled up by none other than Google. All these year of research life that I have experienced, my initial years dealt with overactive imagination bouts where I attempted to create the most impressive of the literature review. This was what I call as a lot of archival research … Continue reading “Does a Doctoral Researcher Imagine Beyond the Possible?”

Most of the research scholar’s time is gobbled up by none other than Google. All these year of research life that I have experienced, my initial years dealt with overactive imagination bouts where I attempted to create the most impressive of the literature review. This was what I call as a lot of archival research and now when I am at a mature stage of my thesis writing, I can really say that my search revolves around means and ways to garnish my thesis or season it with salt and pepper.

Oh Well, I have been able to show so much creativity and write with such creative instinct perhaps because now I am a deep rooted researcher who can really think and imagine beyond the impossible. I have, at multiple occasions, tried to personify my thesis and my role as a researcher in varied ways. At my best imaginative phases, my daily task is not any different than being a shepherd. When the spring is here, the pastures are full of sheep. That’s my data, my work that I have reared and got ready over the time. My job now is to get them into an alignment and take them out the gate, as so planned…!!

This is my PhD picture and I have many such pictures I have imagined over the time that I can share. At you r creative and imaginative best, what is your picture?