Today I have been working on SSSC 23 Things Digital 'Thing 7' which is entitled 'Finding Resources'.
This has been my most fun 'thing' yet. Being given keys to a library is heaven sent. I can easily get lost in a rabbit warren of research and reading and be more than happy.
This 'thing' firstly tasked me with going onto SSKS (Social Services Knowledge Scotland) and creating an Athens account so that I can access all the goodies within. Now in the back of my mind I had a sneaking suspicion that at some point in the dim and distant past I had made an account. This did turn out to be true and I was very quickly up and running again with a new password-no hassle. It is really super easy. This then was my keys to the library and somewhere I suspect I am going to spend a lot of time. Why I had not been using it for so long I don't know.
I had a peruse of the Criminal Justice portal as suggested and found great links to other sites that will be helpful for me. Part of my role is developing and delivering learning to operational colleagues on this topic area. This also gives me good and reliable sites to signpost colleagues to.
This 'thing' next tasked me with using the site to perform a search for a document that I can use. I used the search function to look for articles in English containing specific terms (related to criminal justice and trauma) and published in the last 5 years. I got a good load of results from this and I then had the option to 'tweak' these results further. I made preferences on my subject list-just the same as applying filters when online shopping!-and selected an article that caught my interest in the field of criminal justice and trauma about screening for PTSD in incarcerated men. I then discovered I can also look to see 'sources citing this' and 'sources cited in this' which is a real boon and will make this much quicker. I also had the option to email, print etc so I selected email. This worked to an extent but the hyperlink would not open. I suspected that this was because I was on work email and there may be some restrictions but on sending this to my own email it still did not work. I will need to pursue this with IT department. I then went back and saved the article in my Athens account and learned I can save searches as well as documents-this will be a really useful feature for me because I do make searches in my role and select a specific document but at later date the same search criteria can be useful for me. After saving the article I clicked on it as it said the full text was accessible-I had two options one was to click onto Sage journals-I followed instructions there to view the text however despite saying and Athens account holder could view by signing when I clicked to sign in it kept taking back to the initial page. So not to be put off I tried another option which was viewing on open access. This worked and I was able to save the PDF of the article. This was quite an academic article but will be useful for me in my role as I am taking a lead in reviewing and updating a course that my organisation runs which I am a mentor for. I mentor staff through the course who provide direct support and manage services for this client group. Using SSKS will be really useful for me in making specific searches and being confident in the quality of the documents that I am reading and citing-for example the article I saved today was peer reviewed. I will be able to use this process for work on new and reviewed courses but also in my role supporting managers and teams who support people with very specific issues who need a bespoke service from myself to help them gain skills, knowledge and confidence.
I also had to perform an advanced google search. This was really simple too. I launched a normal search in google and then accessed settings to gain access to an advanced search. From there I was able to whittle down my search by' language', 'last update a year ago', 'terms in title' and usage rights as 'free to use and share'. From this I was dismayed to see three results and they were all adverts! However I then clicked for scholarly articles and got a page full of results. So I will remember this in future. I selected a result and ended up on a website called 'Springer Link' and found out that this website provides researchers access to millions of scientific documents. This is reassuring.
I found both processes really straightforward to use and will definitely be useful to me in my role regarding learning materials. For topics that I am already familiar with it will support me to update my knowledge and be confident in what I am supporting staff with. For new topics I will know where to go to find good, reliable information. I appreciate that the Google search function does not guarantee quality, reliability and provenance however it is a useful additional search process and with a bit of digging I think I could sort the wheat from the chaff.
