IFRA training workshop: ‘Introduction to Mendeley programme’ with Chrystel Oloukoï and Julien Roland

Date: Wednesday 10^th of July 2019

Location: IFRA-Nigeria's library

On Wednesday 10^th of July, IFRA-Nigeria hosted a methodological seminar at IFRA-Nigeria’s library, at the Institute of African Studies (University of Ibadan). The workshop was facilitated by Chrystel Oloukoï (PhD candidate, Harvard University, USA) and Julien Roland (PhD candidate, Kent State University, USA) and consisted of an introduction and short-training to the computer programme Mendeley.

In the past years, numerous computer programmes have been developed for the academic field to facilitate research production, including references managers such as Zotero, Airtable or Mendeley. Such programmes are great tools for researchers working with extensive literature and largely facilitate management, references and annotations of academic papers. It is to be expected that those programmes will become a mandatory tool for PhD students in the near future.

 

What is Mendeley?

Mendeley is a free desktop and web programme owned by Elsevier and used for managing and referencing research articles. It is particularly useful to keep track of research readings as well as to build a strong literature review.

The facilitators

• Chrystel Oloukoï is a PhD candidate at Harvard (USA) in anthropology and African and African American Studies.
• Julien Roland is a PhD candidate at Kent University (USA) in Modern and Classical language studies.

About the workshop

The workshop gathered 12 Master or PhD students working in Social Sciences or Humanities and willing to get familiar with the use of the programme Mendeley for research purposes. The facilitators guided the students through the different functionalities and uses of the programmes from the search for literature references, organisation of online library to the creation of bibliography.