Reading reading and more reading

Today, I finally sat down and started to make proper reading notes. Until now, it has been a psychological battle, I always managed to find other quite valid things to do, look at, or organise.

I started with Christine Bruce’s Seven faces of information literacy, as it is a tile that I am familiar, and one, which provides a great introduction to IL. This seminal title helped to move IL theory away from the one dimensional mechanistic ‘behavioural’ model to propose a new ‘relational’ model – that is, to view IL from a user, human perspective.

Christine Bruce’s website: http://sky.fit.qut.edu.au/~bruce/index.php

Taking stock

I finally managed to make myself sit down and spend time collecting my thoughts and putting them down on paper. Why is this beneficial, task so difficult to do? The ‘How to books’ mentioned previously, have been very useful in that they have helped highlighting the kinds of things I should be thinking about in my first 3-6 months. Two such examples: (a) I spent time completeing a training needs analysis (TNA); (b) I drew up an agenda for my next meeting with my director of studies. I then started to think about pulling together in a systematic, and idiot proof way, a bibliography of works that I need to obtain. I am using EndNote, and I am beginning to find out that it can be a little fiddly to use. I should get myself on a training course, something to add to my TNA.

Lets get going...

OK here goes, I am now into the second week of my PhD, and still feel that I am overwhelmed by the amount of basic reading I need to complete – in fact, I seem to be reading “how to complete you PhD” books than actual research! The single gem of wisdom they all seem to give is “that you need to be a tortoise and not a hare”. It is a long process. My aims for this week are: -

· build upon the basic brain storming and planning I did last week;

· make an initial start to my literature review (this will be a symbolic gesture for myself);

· write this blog every working day (5 days a week, excluding holidays) – using it my research journal.

A visit to a library

I had a look around the Civic Quarter library today in the city centre, whilst there I managed to obtained my NUS Card. After my visit to the Civic Quarter, I went over to the Leeds University library to try out my SCONUL library card – success! The downside of this visit was although the library catalogue stated that a particular title I am after is in-stock it seems to have vanished from the shelf. I spent the rest of the afternoon ‘reading’ the Universities Research Regulations. These regulations are referred to by the Research Handbook as essential reading – hmm, ‘how to scare someone silly more like.’

Drowning in PDFs

I spent this morning organising the 324 PDF articles I have collected over the past few months. I seriously need to assess these articles as there is a lot of rubbish here – that said even with the dross removed there is a lot of reading ahead. I finally received my Athens login today. That’s great I can start adding more articles to the 324 I have already got! I also started a ‘quotes’ file looking for useful and interesting quotes or aphorisms that may be useful in later life – this was at the instigation of one of those DIY PhD books that I have borrowed from the library. Apparently the key is to discover useful and original quotes to help set the scene and illustrate your writing.

Day 3

Hallelujah! I have received a library login (still no sign of my Athens username, or proper network login) and can borrow library books. I borrowed a number of DIY ‘idiots guides’ to completing your PhD – useful reading for later, and I hope will tell me in three easy steps what to do! I met a fellow student who is in the process of completing his PhD, he showed me some of the ‘ropes’ and gave me a few tips. I am beginning to feel that things are beginning to slot into place, and fee quite optimistic.

Day 2

A goodnights sleep helps to dispel the nervousness of the previous day. Day two provides and excellent opportunity to visit my desk, and start to meet people and explore the library. Unfortunately, I can’t borrow books yet as my library card has not yet been activated, nor do I have access to Athens electronic resources, nor a proper network access. I spend the day making lists of what I need to find out and about and thinking about the actions I need to complete in the short term.