Instead of embedding this YouTube video as I would normally do, I decided to embed the tweet from my @LINCLibrarian twitter account. It features the Academic Writing Support (AWS) manager, Judith Elkin, answering questions about what the services does to help students with their assignments. If you would like to book an appointment or turn up at one of our drop-in sessions then please see the AWS guide http://guides.library.lincoln.ac.uk/aws
Our database this week in our long-running theme is Mintel.
If you’ve ever wondered what the database Mintel is capable of then this short video is a neat overview. There’s an amazing amount of UK-based information covering a wide range of sectors, categories (from austerity and value to social media) to demographics (which includes millennials). You can download a range of data from spreadsheets, and then convert them into graphs for your assignments, as well as creating impressive reports.
For instance, there’s an impressive report on mobile phone, only just published, that has not only a report but a databook where the hyperlinks on the spreadsheet, once clicked, provides options like what operating system consumers are using as well as their age range.
Why not spend a few minutes selecting various options and seeing what it can do. If you need any help then please contact me and I’m more than happy to meet you, or advise you via email.
This is a video I produced as part of the Teaching and Learning in Digital Education course I studied at the University of Lincoln. There are two versions of this video, one with a literature review and one without. This one contains a literature review. Both are available on YouTube.
Stella Cottrell, author of many books including the seminal Study Skills Handbook, explains what the 7 Approaches to Learning are in this short video, and covers what independent learning is all about such as devising active learning when you’re studying outside of the classroom so you become a successful and productive student.
This video shows you how to add references to Refworks from the Web. Well, as the title suggests…This video is from the Refworks Community webpage available on the Refworks homepage.
Welcome to the social media age! Well, it’s the first chapter in an engrossing read entitled ‘The Business of Being Social‘ by Michelle Carvill and David Taylor, and a friendly introduction to start this blog post. It’s the second edition, published last year, and covers every aspect of social media and ‘explains step-by-step how you can create a strategy for success’. Why is it important? Social media is simply indispensable to any business, it (almost) goes without saying. The significant dates in technological innovation include telephones (1876), radio (1896), television (1925), and World Wide Web (1990) could be justifiably enhanced by social media being launched on:
5th May 2003 – LinkedIn
4th February 2004 – FaceBook
23rd April 2005 -YouTube
21 March 2006- Twitter
2007 marked The Apple iPhone’s arrival to herald the smartphone age. Other social networks include Google+, Pinterest and Instagram, alongside social messaging sites WhatsApp and Snapchat. These outflank all other media in their huge global reach. The figures are staggering: Facebook has over 1.4 billion active users, Twitter has 280 million, LinkedIn over 340 million, YouTube over 1 billion and Google+ around 300 million. Almost 2 billion people access social networks, and is estimated to rise to 2.44 billion in two years’ time. The book is interesting to read not only for those running a business, or a student studying the social media aspect of business, but for anyone interested, as I am, in this dynamic area.
The Business of Being Social (2nd ed) is available at 658.872 car on the 2nd floor of the Library.
This is our 200th post on the Business Librarian blog! By way of commemorating this major milestone I have decided to announce that I’ve just attended some further EndNote training, which is referencing software generally used by, although not exclusively, postgraduates and academics. At first it can be hard learning something as multi-layered as EndNote. Learning Refworks for instance, another referencing software package we subscribe to, took a little while to fully understand. Only when producing lesson plans and responding to student queries did the referencing penny finally drop and I was able to master Refworks. Following an instructor is worthwhile, but it doesn’t match a practical (let’s say problem-solving)) approach of dealing with obstacles, because making mistakes is important. Indeed there is almost entire discipline on making mistakes and it is recognised by theorists that mistakes are an integral part of the learning process and a key component in assembling self-reflective values. Why not check out Rolková & Janošková’s (2014) Employee mistakes as a necessary way of learning in companies in Proceedings of the Multidisciplinary Academic Conference if you are interested in the scholarly literature out there? I digress. Fortunately our esteemed colleague, the Academic Subject Librarian for Journalism is currently producing a guide and EndNote does own a YouTube account which holds many helpful online tutorials, one of which is a 25-minute starter called ‘EndNote on Windows’.
Philip Kotler gives the lowdown on Marketing, via the YouTube channel. Simply unmissable for anyone interested in business. Kotler’s book, Marketing Management, is the world’s most widely used graduate level textbook in marketing. The sixteenth edition of Phlip Kotler and Gary Armstrong’s extraordinarily popular Principle of Marketing is held at the University Library, like so many libraries all over world. In this lecture the man himself effortlessly talks about marketing at the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2012, a prestigious gathering which attracts today’s brilliant minds. The word ‘marketing’ was not even invented in the year 1900. The first department store was opened in Japan. The first newspaper ad appeared during the English interregnum period in 1652 advertising coffee, and the first ad agency NW Ayres appeared advertising Pears Soap in the Victorian era. The ancient Greeks had markets. The first marketing books appeared as economist books, but were written by ‘disillusioned economists’, so marketing is a branch of economics by association. Kotler’s famous mantra is place, price and promotion, potential, but what is marketing? ‘Marketing is everything’ and starts with the customer. Without the customer there is no business. Marketers rarely talk about ‘sane marketing’ like a brewery advising about not drinking too much, or the ethical use of pesticides. The public doesn’t tend to buy something that is a new idea. Even activist Noami Klein’s seminal No Logo is considered a marketing book even though it attacks brand consumption, because she informs the public that they are ‘paying too much’ for a product because of its received brand kudos. Kotler lists the best marketers like Ingvar Kamprad, the founder of IKEA, who wanted to reduce the price of furniture. The late Anita Roddick of Body Shop said, somewhat elliptically, ‘not selling hope – I’m selling motion’. Richard Branson’s a great self-publicist using stunts to promote a new product. Kotler discusses the products of aspiration, selling compassion, improving the lives of people. He asks the audience if there is a company they like, and Apple is unsurprisingly the favourite, like so many of our students choosing to write marketing assignments on product placement of the Apple i-phone in an emerging economy . It emerges that the customer is the bona fide marketer of Coca-Cola, because the company created a love-affair with the consumer so it pays relatively little for marketing. It’s all about exposure, particularly around social media, but the firm needs to know its audience otherwise investment is a waste of money. But has the U.S. reached saturation point? Growth is the issue. Growth means jobs. Kotler discusses the death of demand, how does a firm grow and defend that business and hold onto their customers? His advice is astonishing: ignore the books! Go against the grain to succeed. I would recommend this video for anyone wishing to learn more about marketing from a certified expert.
YouTube, as you know as you’re reading this blog entry, is a treasure trove of lectures by notable figures from business schools across the globe. It is worth exploring and finding out about your subject in an age of democratising information.
RefWorks is designed to help you to easily gather, manage, store and share information, as well as generate citations and bibliographies. For help using RefWorks please use the online help, contact your Academic Subject Librarian, or Email Refworks
To see our full complement of Library videos select our YouTube account at: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCScsEbmM_Wmp8IiURjz8iUw
Richard Galletly’s (an Academic English Lecturer at Aston University) excellent overview of writing an effective essay to discuss and critically evaluate different motivation theories is well worth watching. He also offers written and verbal feedback on a student’s essay on the banking crisis which is useful and answers many frequently asked questions in the process. Richard refers to Andy Gillet’s 2009 Inside Track to Successful Academic Writing book as inspiration for his video, which is available on YouTube.
Please view our Library video for Welcome Week, which starts next week. The video covers everything from borrowing books to printing, as well as new developments like online reading lists.
