Online guides
Featured
Start to finish: Dissertations
These resources will take you through how to plan, research and choose a topic for your dissertation. They will help you to produce a well planned, researched dissertation that will hold your interest and the interest of your reader.
Featured
Start to finish: Essay writing
This set of resources will take you through the writing process from start to finish and help you to produce a well-structured, coherent piece of work that answers the question, evidences your own analysis and is easy for your reader to follow.
Featured
Start to finish: Maths
Do you have a question about maths, or data handling? This resource brings together support available to you online, and through our drop-ins and maths club.
Featured
Start to finish: Present like a pro
These resources will take you through how to plan, design and deliver presentations. They will help you to produce a well-structured, coherent presentation that fulfills your brief, is visually appealing and is engaging for your audience.
Featured
Start to finish: Referencing
This set of resources will show you how to reference different types of sources in your assignments. It will help you to cite, paraphrase and manage your references using tools such as EndNote, Endnote online and Mendeley.
Featured
Start to finish: Revision
This set of resources will take you through the revision process from start to finish. It will help you to prioritise your revision effectively.
Featured
Start to finish: Statistics
Do you need to analyse a set of data and produce some statistics? You do not need to be an expert to produce a statistical report. These resources will give you a basic introduction to statistics and introduce you to producing reports in SPSS.
Adding up: describing data and choosing a statistical test
This resource will explore the methods and descriptives you can use to describe your data. It will also show you how to select appropriate statistical tests and find them in SPSS.
Adding up: introducing SPSS
This resource explores some of the key features and interfaces of SPSS, which you can use to generate reports, charts, descriptive statistics and analysis.
Adding up: introduction to statistics
This resource will give you a basic introduction to statistical terminology, charts and data types. It will also give you advice on how to organise your data to make it easier to analyse and present.
Being critical: thinking, reading and writing critically
This resource explores how to be critical, highlighting practical strategies you can use in your academic reading and writing that will enable you to demonstrate critical analysis in your assignments.
Better safe than sorry: proofreading your work
This resource explores three vital elements to review when proofreading your work - flow, clarity and accuracy - and gives you a chance to learn about and apply some techniques to ensure that you check your work properly.
Citing it right: introducing referencing
This resource explores the principles behind referencing, highlighting why it is good academic practice. It outlines when and how you need to reference, and how to read a reference when following up a source listed on a reading list or bibliography.
Critical appraisal for medical and health sciences
This resource explores the process of critically appraising articles to make it easier to quickly decide which of the thousands of research papers are published every month you should spend your time reading.
Dissertations: choosing your topic
This resource focuses on choosing a topic for your dissertation.It will take you through the key elements of the early stages of your dissertation such as writing your research question and the objectives for achieving it.
Dissertations: planning
This resource will highlight some of the key stages in planning to write your dissertation. It will also highlight some useful tools to help you along the way.
Dissertations: the A-Z of literature reviews
This resource will give you an introduction to literature reviews. It will also give you advice on what a good literature should include, and how to prepare for writing your literature review.
Down to business: finding business information
This set of resources introduces a number of powerful research tools you can use to get a range of business information. It includes practical demonstrations of the Fame (company information), Passport (market research) and Factiva (trade and industry news) databases.
Finding a job: CV structure and presentation
This resource explores the elements of a well presented and coherently structured CV, and illustrates how you can create a professional looking CV that will be easier for recruiters to read and make a positive first impression.
Finding a job: researching the organisation
This resource highlights some of the key things you need to know about a role and an organisation before applying for a job, and provides some tips on where you can look to gather the evidence you need to make your application stand out.
Finding a job: tailoring your CV
This resource examines how you can use the information you have about a role to highlight relevant skills, experience and attributes in your CV, making it easier for recruiters to see how you fit the role you are applying for.
Finding a job: Writing an effective CV
Your CV is the first impression that a potential employer will get of you. These resources will take you through the process of researching the role to writing your CV; it will help you to produce a well-structured, tailored CV, that will highlight your relevant skills and experience.
Finding the good stuff: evaluating your sources
This resource explores the process of evaluating the sources you find to ensure they are relevant and quality assured, equipping you with the skills you need to identify high-quality information to use in your academic work.
Get a grip: understanding your task
This resource takes you through the process of analysing your assignment task to ensure that you're clear about what you're being asked to do, giving you some useful techniques to ensure that your work remains focused on directly addressing the question at hand.
Getting results: guides to searching databases
This set of resources will demonstrate the process of performing a search on a number of database platforms. They each cover performing a search, refining your results and saving, emailing and exporting your results. Some of these resources are only available to University of Manchester students and staff.
Group work
This resource explores key elements of group work. Including, the skills involved and getting the most from working collaboratively. It also highlights important considerations to help you stay on track and address issues that may arise.
Introducing Special Collections
This resource introduces the different types of materials found in the Library's Special Collections, explaining what they are and how this valuable source of primary material spanning five millennia and covering a broad spectrum of subjects can be used to support your studies.
Know your sources: types of information
This resource highlights the strengths and weaknesses of different information types, enabling you to make informed decisions about the types of source you use for different purposes in your academic work.
Knowing where to look: your search toolkit
This resource explores Google, Google Scholar, subject databases and Library Search, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses to enable you to make an informed choice when selecting where to search for information.
Manage your references using EndNote
This resource explores some of the key features of EndNote reference management software. It includes video demonstrations in how to collect, organise and format your references for both EndNote desktop and EndNote online.
Mindset: Change your approach to learning
This resource will introduce you to two different approaches to learning. It will demonstrate how reframing your approach to challenges can have a positive impact on your life and make you a more successful learner.
Never a wasted word: writing your essay
This resource explores the purpose and process of writing an essay, highlighting how you can ensure that your themes run throughout your work, and that every section of your essay supports your argument to help your reader to understand your ideas.
Note making: capturing what counts
This resource looks at the purposes and contexts in which you make notes. It also provides an overview of different note-making techniques and which purpose theses techniques are most effective for.
Now or never? Overcoming procrastination
These two online resources will help you to understand the roots of your own personal procrastination behaviour, and explore a range of strategies that you can try out to help you to overcome it and start getting things done!
Now or never? Strategies for dealing with procrastination
This resource examines some of the practical strategies that you can use to help you to overcome your procrastination.
Now or never? Understanding the procrastination cycle
This resource will help you to explore your own procrastination behaviour, and recognise how it is often rooted in certain negative thoughts and emotions.
Original thinking allowed: avoiding plagiarism
This resource explores some of the issues surrounding academic integrity, providing you with techniques to help you to avoid plagiarism when referring to the work of others and to add your own voice into your work.
Planning ahead: making your search work
This resource explores the process of planning a search, highlighting some techniques you can use to refine your search to help you to get a manageable number of high-quality, relevant results to use in your work.
Podcast: 12 tips for successful revision
Podcast: Exam extra revision tips and resources
Present like a pro: planning your way to success
This resource takes you through the process of planning your presentation, giving you some useful techniques to ensure that your presentation remains focused on the requirements of your task and directly addresses the topic you're covering.
Present like a pro: the art of delivery
In this resource we will explore what makes a good presenter and how can you use this to become a more confident when presenting. These techniques will enable you to deliver your presentations in a way that will make your audience sit up and take notice!
Present like a pro: visual victory
This resource outlines different visual tools you can utilise to create visual aids for your presentation. It explores the types of visual aids you can use and what to display on screen. It will give you some inspiration you can use to design your own slides.
Report writing
This resource explores key elements of producing a written report. Including, structure, purpose, language and referencing; It highlights important considerations to help you write clear and concise reports.
Revision strategies: managing your revision successfully
This resource will help you to develop strategies you can use to manage your revision effectively by creating a revision plan.
Search operators: refine AND combine OR NOT?
This resource will introduce you to the use of search operators in subject databases.
You will gain a greater understanding of how each operator refines and manipulates your search; enabling you to retrieve more accurate and relevant results.
Shopping for information: introducing subject databases
This resource explores some of the key features of subject databases, demonstrating that while they can initially appear daunting and complicated, they can be as easy to use as any online shopping site.
The big picture: achieving your academic goals
This resource will encourage you to consider your long-term academic goals by putting your studies into the broader context of your continued personal development.It will help you to identify and prioritise the steps you need to take in order to achieve these goals.
The student guide to social media
This resource explores some social media tools, providing advice on how you can use them in your studies to find information, work with others, keep up to date, network and develop your online presence.Developed in collaboration with Skills@Library, University of Leeds and the University of York Library.
What's the big idea: developing and organising your argument
This resource outlines a five-step technique you can use to help you to identify what your main arguments are, and to organise your ideas into a coherent structure.