Refworks

“Your Online Personal Database and Bibliography Creator”. Tired of trying to learn a new style of citation for every paper you write? Refworks formats your paper and bibliography for you and is free for U of M students. Access the website through library's website (or click on "Refworks" above).

Greg

Use a professor's office hours

You know the first day of class when the professor explains the marking scheme and announces office hours? Believe it or not, those office hours are like gold! You get almost unrestricted access to an expert in a particular field. To get the kind of tutoring, advice and tips you can get from a professor during office hours, companies and individuals are willing to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars. The professors know what will be on the your exams and they know where you are likely to have problems, so use a professor’s office hours to your best advantage.

Kris

Music for Study?

Most of the people I know study while listening to music. While there have been studies to show that listening to music can be beneficial, the research in this area is still inconclusive. So, most experts (mostly psychology professors) say that studying to music is good if it’s relaxing and doesn’t split your focus. If you need music to study, then music without words such as classical, instrumental or even those sounds of the rain forest CDs is suggested.

Kris

Need to polish your writing skills?

The New Humanities Reader offers a series of 14 tutorials aimed at helping students improve their writing skills. Each tutorial highlights a different aspect of the writing process. Check it out:

E-Resources

I've become frustrated with my dictionary, which, because it's five years old, is already obsolete and does not include new words, such as "cybrarian", "hacktivism", or "yada yada". Rather than buying a new dictionary (too expensive!), I've been using the Oxford English Dictionary online, which is available to students through the U of M libraries website. Check out the other online dictionaries and encyclopedias to which the U of M subscribes at http://umanitoba.ca/libraries/elibrary/ebooks_etexts.html

A Word A Day

Want to increase your word power? Check out "A.Word.A.Day" (AWAD) at http://wordsmith.org/awad/subscriber.html Sign up at this site and receive a daily email with a definition, examples of how the word is used in contemporary English, and a link to an audio pronunciation. AWAD mailing list addresses are never sold, rented, leased or traded, so no worries about junk mail. I particularly enjoy the quotations at the end of each entry!