Abstract
The University of Bolton, which positions itself as Teaching Intensive; Research Informed, has a small but significant – and developing - research community. This presentation will explore the ways in which any student engaging in any research – from the beginnings of a final year dissertation to the final stages of a PhD research proposal and writing up a thesis - is encouraged to apply the information literacy skills they already possess. A late adopter of webscale discovery technologies, we have seen a marked change in attitudes to finding online information. Discover@Bolton, our newly-launched webscale discovery service, is showing that students are already empowered to leave their comfort zone. There is a direct correlation between subject enquiries made to librarians and recorded search terms from Discover@Bolton. In addition, the number of searches is significantly higher than the number of visits to the service, suggesting that students come to Discover@Bolton and stay there. Besides this, the University of Bolton has been proactive in encouraging researchers at every stage of their career to engage in open access by means of depositing research in the University of Bolton Institutional Repository, such as depositing examples of excellent research proposals, student poetry that has been published in an in-house publication as well as contributing to the early stages of a project to encourage students to work with supervisors to achieve peer-reviewed publication.