Competence six: Managing information

This is competence six in the RCN's Finding, using and managing information: nursing, midwifery health and social care information literacy competences (PDF 48KB) [see how to access PDF files].

This page guides you to learning resources to enable you to develop your skills related to this competence.

General learning resources

The Open University provides a resource, An expedition through the information world. Section six explores the best ways to manage your information. 

The RCN Learning Zone provides a resource, How trustworthy is your information? This has been developed for nurses, midwives, students, and support workers in health and social care who may be routinely researching topics in support of their day-to-day work or studies. It guides you through some of the issues and activities involved in finding, using and managing information so that you can develop your skills in accessing the right information at the right time, applying and communicating it appropriately.

Social bookmarking

Social bookmarking sites provide an online service where you can store, share and discover web bookmarks. The most popular of these sites is Delicious.

Referencing

If you are writing for a specific purpose such as a university assignment or a journal article you should contact your home institution before you begin to reference your work, as they may have a preferred referencing style for you to use. If you are free to choose your own style it is important to be consistent in your chosen style throughout the document.

Reference management software can be a useful tool to help with referencing. Using the software you can download references and create bibliographies and citations in styles including Harvard and Vancouver. If you are a student you should check with your university library to see if they subscribe to a reference management package (eg RefWorks or EndNote or another package) which you can use for free. Alternatively, Bibme is a free tool which enables you to create bibliographies while you work and then download to a Word document.

Digital inspiration: citing tweets

Guidance about how to reference twitter posts including examples using the Modern Language Association (MLA) and American Psychological Association (APA) referencing styles. If you are writing for a specific purpose, such as a university assignment or a journal article, you should check if the organisation you are writing for has a preferred referencing style. Read more on the Digital Inspiration website.