Today for the first time I visited the Senate house and the library therein, at London. Part of it is the extension of Royal Holloway and houses the library of the University of London. I did not explore the whole library because I knew that I'd be going there again. Philosophy section is on the 6th floor, up the spire! However, I did get a membership (through my student ID at Royal Holloway). There was also a lecture that I'd signed up for at the Senate house today.
The lecture was about 'approaching the thesis' which covered some of the general guidelines with regard to PhD and writing the thesis. I've now realised that most of the common aspects spoken of with regard to methodology, ethics, research skills and analysis are most useful to everyone except those doing in the field of philosophy and perhaps mathematics!! With nothing more than concepts to wrestle with, those of us doing a PhD in philosophy have merely books and articles to tackle. Unless doing some interdisciplinary topic or theme, we have no interviews, surveys, field work, tabulation, protecting data and sources...
However, the lecture which was very informal and eliciting a discussion from the dozen of us who signed up for it, was quite useful. I learnt of some resources which could be used for note-taking and planning and referencing... Aired my experiment of using a blog for note-taking, which the lecturer found very interesting and novel! Heard some of the 'seniors' and the lecturer speak highly of 'zotero' - need to experiment with that. Remembered the need to have a back up system in place, just in case my laptop conks off! Am thinking of trying out Greenstone for that (heard of it years ago from Fr Julian Fox and the whole SDL section of the international online resource of the Salesians is based on it). All in all, a very useful day.
Then of course, the rest of the afternoon, roamed around London city!
The lecture was about 'approaching the thesis' which covered some of the general guidelines with regard to PhD and writing the thesis. I've now realised that most of the common aspects spoken of with regard to methodology, ethics, research skills and analysis are most useful to everyone except those doing in the field of philosophy and perhaps mathematics!! With nothing more than concepts to wrestle with, those of us doing a PhD in philosophy have merely books and articles to tackle. Unless doing some interdisciplinary topic or theme, we have no interviews, surveys, field work, tabulation, protecting data and sources...
However, the lecture which was very informal and eliciting a discussion from the dozen of us who signed up for it, was quite useful. I learnt of some resources which could be used for note-taking and planning and referencing... Aired my experiment of using a blog for note-taking, which the lecturer found very interesting and novel! Heard some of the 'seniors' and the lecturer speak highly of 'zotero' - need to experiment with that. Remembered the need to have a back up system in place, just in case my laptop conks off! Am thinking of trying out Greenstone for that (heard of it years ago from Fr Julian Fox and the whole SDL section of the international online resource of the Salesians is based on it). All in all, a very useful day.
Then of course, the rest of the afternoon, roamed around London city!
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