23 Research Things

What is 23 Research Things?

23 Research Things is a self-directed, online learning programme for university staff and graduate students, showcasing a range of digital tools that can support research activity. The programme will share and explore new digital tools that might be useful to you and will also provide a framework for evaluation, reflection and for the wider integration of digital technologies within your research practice.

Each week, we’ll talk about one or more of the tools/tasks from our 23 Things programme and encourage you to try it out and reflect on how it could be of benefit to your work as a researcher.

23 Research Things is an initiative of the University of Melbourne Library and has been inspired by the Bodleian Library’s 23 Things for Research at Oxford and the DH23 Things programme at the University of Cambridge.  The original 23 Things program was developed by the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County in the USA in 2006.

Who is it for?

The programme is open to all members of the University of Melbourne, regardless of their position or status (staff, student, full-time, part-time, etc.). However, the content will be tailored towards the university’s research community. If you are not a member of the University, you are very welcome to participate in the programme, but you may not be eligible for support.

Whatever your current level of confidence, the programme aims to help you develop a strategic approach to integrating digital skills into your work as a researcher; you might be using some of the tools already, in which case the programme will encourage you to think more deeply about how and why they can benefit your professional practice, and how to get the most out of them.

How does it work?

23 Research Things launches on March 24 2014 and will consist of a series of short weekly posts; the schedule can be found here. It is open-access and you can engage with as much or as little as you like: join the conversation regularly or just read the occasional blog post. You might like to use this as an opportunity to set up your own research blog. We’ll be covering blogging later in the programme (Thing 05) and you can then register your blog with us. If you already have a blog, let us know and we’ll add the URL of your blog to the site so that others can engage with you (and vice versa).

How long do I have to complete the programme?

The programme kicks off on 24 March 2014 and officially finishes up in September. The content on the site will remain open, so you can freely dip in to the posts that most interest you and that cover digital tools most useful for your research.

What if I need help?

Please ask! We’ll try to give clear instructions on each thing but feel free to leave comments on the blog posts with questions or tweet the Library (@unilibrary) with the hashtag #23Things and we’ll try to help. We hope that University members across all disciplines will participate and, since the programme is self-directed, we encourage you to engage with fellow participants and with the 23 Research Things team. If there is demand, we hope to organise some meet-ups to look at certain tools in more depth.

Who are the 23 Research Things Team?

Jennifer Warburton (Program Leader: Research Impact and Training, University Library)

Mark Shepheard (Library Research Support Officer (Graduate Research), University Library)

Anna Shadbolt (Manager: Digital Scholarship Research, University Library)

Andrea Hurt (Client Services & Liaison Librarian, Arts, University Library)

Andy Tseng (Data Infrastructure Architect, Research Services, Information Technology Services)

Attribution

Some content on the 23 Research Things blog has been adapted from the Bodleian Library’s 23 Things for Research and the DH23 Things programme at the University of Cambridge under their Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. The University of Melbourne’s 23 Research Things programme is similarly produced under the same Creative Commons License.