Writing Week: Improve Your Writing, Improve Your Life

Writing is hard. It’s work. Love it or hate it, you can’t avoid it! Whether you are a Math major or an English major, writing is something everyone has to learn to do well before they leave college, because employers want to hire people who can handle themselves with a word processor.  As George Anders recently pointed out in the Wall Street Journal, companies may say they’re looking for people with technical skills, but they actually prefer to hire strong writers regardless of job preparation. And even though Forbes doesn’t explicitly name writing as one of the 10 most important skills employers are looking for, they still acknowledge that “the trick is to communicate clearly that you have those skills,” probably through a nicely written cover letter.

Our motto at UB is “Knowledge that Works,” and improving your writing is probably the best way to make your knowledge work for you and see the payoff promised by your college degree. No matter what kind of job you end up with after you graduate, you are going to need to write to get it, and then write to keep it. Cover letters, resumes, personal statements, and writing samples may help you get a job. Reports, memos, carefully worded advertisements, case studies, and important research publications will help you keep the job once you’ve secured it. You can’t avoid writing, even if you’ve carefully selected a career based on the perception that you won’t have to write much!  Bottom line: writing is a powerful tool that you can put to work to improve your life in direct and indirect ways. If you learn to wield the tool effectively.

The National Council of Teachers of English created the National Day of Writing to acknowledge the importance of writing in our time and encourage literacy education. In anticipation of this big day, Langsdale Library will host a week of activities and workshops to help students participate more fully in the world of writing and learn to be conscious of their writing practice.

 Monday 10/9: From Facebook to First Draft: Academic Language

 4:00-5:30pm

     Tuesday 10/10: UB Writers on Writing (Panel Discussion)

     12:30-2:00pm

     Wednesday 10/11: What's Good Feedback?

     12:30-2:00pm

     Thursday 10/12: How to Cite Right -- Avoiding Plagiarism

     4:00-5:30pm

     Friday 10/13: Writing Retreat

     12:00-6:00pm

Each event is different, and there is something for everyone. The workshop on academic language encourages participants to understand the characteristics of academic writing as a genre and to think about how academic audiences might be unique. Tuesday's panel discussion features UB faculty, who will describe their own writing interests and give students insights into writing in various disciplines. Wednesday's workshop encourage students to improve their technique for peer review, and Thursday's event introduces students to the intricacies of MLA, APA, and Chicago citation styles. 

The festivities culminate in our big writing retreat on Friday, October 13. You don’t have to be a great writer to participate; the point is to exercise your writing muscles and have fun.  Each hour of the event, from 12:00pm to 6:00pm, there will be a different writing prompt meant to engage you creatively or intellectually. If you’d rather work on writing for class or personal fulfillment, you can do that, too! There will be writing consultants and faculty on hand throughout the retreat to help you improve and give you tips to do your best work.

All of this prepares us to participate in the National Day of Writing, which is Friday, October 20. In the time between our writing retreat and the NDoW, we want UB students and faculty to fill social media with the best examples of our voices, our ideas, and our experiences. Share your work using the official NDoW hashtag #whyIwrite and add #UBwrites to share with our community.

Self-recycling FTW!

Hi! I'm Pete Ramsey, one of the Reference and Instruction librarians at Langsdale Library, and I also teach the Information Literacy (IDIS 110) course in first-year student learning communities. 

Self-Recycling

My IDIS 110 course includes a rather detailed discussion of copyright and plagiarism. One interesting concept often missed in academic treatment of these topics is something called "self-recycling." The usual search engines give little in the way of a useful definition, so I will explain it briefly here and point out some good and bad self-recycling practices.

Definition and Example

At its most basic, self-recycling is taking a project you created for one class and handing it in for another class. To be very clear, turning in the exact same project in multiple classes, without explicit permission from all professors involved, is considered academic dishonesty (also known as "cheating"). However, it is a quite different--and very good--idea to go back to a good topic in later classes, updating and customizing your work based on the requirements and content of each course.

Here's an example of self-recycling done right. Way back in the fifth grade, I did a history project about the Spanish Armada and Philip II's attempted invasion of England. I collected a fair pile of resources, made note cards and an outline, and wrote a decent paper about the series of events. A few years later, I took that foundation, added stronger sources, and wrote a much-improved version for a high school European history class. I did a third research paper about the Spanish Armada for a college Iberian Peninsular history course, this time writing in Spanish and focusing on the long-term impact on the economies of Spain and Portugal. What's important for academic integrity is that I updated my research and changed the major focus each time I returned to the topic.

Here are some benefits to (proper) self-recycling

• You already know you like the topic. DO NOT underestimate how important it is to like your research topics in school.
• You save mental work figuring out the background of a topic or event.
• Recycling (or "up-cycling") an idea is a really good way to dive deeper into the topic or event. The more you know, the more you have to say about it.
• Most people in the "real world" actually work on one project for longer than a semester. This is especially true of research done by your professors.

Here are some negative things to consider

• Some professors hate self-recycling of any sort. They want students to learn new things, to grow their minds in unexpected directions, and to develop a broader understanding of the world (as opposed to a deeper understand of one topic). They might be right, especially for undergraduates. I invite debate on this point.
• Every professor seems to have their own way to make assignments unique. They may require different kinds of sources, they may use a different citation style, or they may ask you to--you know--relate the topic to concepts covered in that particular course.
• Sometimes it's easier to start all over again.
• If you use your favorite topic for an assignment that you eventually come to hate, you might not ever want to work on that topic again.

As you wrap up final exams and projects, think about things you learned this semester that really interested you. Was there a topic you loved learning about? Save all the work you did on it, you might get a chance to return to the same topic again. Just don't forget to ask permission!

Need help researching for end of the year papers?

Albert Einstein
akg-images / Universal Images Group

Spring Break has come and gone. The countdown of the last 6 weeks begins now. It’s time to begin thinking about those final papers and projects that will be due soon. Research is usually an enormous portion of final papers and projects. Langsdale has resources to make things just a little bit easier for you. I will start with my personal favorite:

Databases: Need credible sources and reliable information? Langsdale’s databases are the best place to start. There are databases for every subject and major. You will be sure to get useful information

LibGuides: LibGuides is a research assistance tool, with subject guides and useful resources compiled by your friendly librarians. Find out what they know by searching through the LibGuides!

Easybib citation help: It’s a simple way to create citations. Citing properly is not always an easy task when you aren’t familiar with the format. Easybib allows you to copy and paste a website, book, Newspaper, Journal, or database. After you gather the information it correctly creates a citation which you can then print or turn into a Word document. This saves you time and ensures that you’re citing your sources accurately (though remember, it is always a good idea to double check the formatting just to make sure that everything is in its right place).

And of course we have a huge selection of books and ebooks to help you with any project.

You can always ask a librarian for help! There are several ways to get in touch with library staff, such as chat, telephone, e-mail, or just stop by.


As you can see we’re here to make these last few weeks stress free!

And as a side note to graduate students, remember you can submit your theses and dissertations to Special Collections and have them bound at a low cost.

Track your citations through Google Scholar

A few months ago, I posted an entry here about a new service in Google Scholar called Scholar Citation that allows scholars to track citations on their own works, complete with timeline graphics of citation traffic.

Earlier, I wrote that Scholar Citations was only available to a small group of authors; now this service is available to authors with items in Google Scholar . It's a good way to track online articles and presentations that are not indexed in commercial citation indexes.

I encourage faculty to take a look at this service as another method to follow the use of your own work by others.

For Faculty: Google Scholar - Soon you can track your own citations

What, a librarian promoting Google Scholar? Yes, I use it often - it's a great way to track down a source, check citations, etc.

In fact, Langsdale has teamed up with Google to show our own full text resources within Google Scholar. It's easy for you to set up to see Langsdale journal access when you're searching. If you haven't done so already, set up your preferences to show Langsdale holdings in your own search results.

Like many of our library databases, you can also create email alerts in Google Scholar to notify you when additional citations are gathered for your search topic. Simply run a search and then click the "create email alert" link at the top right of the search results. You'll be alerted when new citations appear.

And recently Google offered a new feature in GS; it's called Scholar Citations and it will allow scholars to track citations on their own works, complete with timeline graphic of citation traffic.

Currently Scholar Citations is being used by a small number of authors, but Google plans to open it for all scholars to use in coming weeks (we'll keep you updated).

Image: Creative Commons licensed Flickr photo by ajc1