Directory of Experts
Help guide
ABOUT THE DIRECTORY OF EXPERTS
INFORMATION FOR UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL STAFF
MICROFORMATS IN THE DIRECTORY OF EXPERTS
About the Directory of Experts
The Directory of Experts contains details of academic staff who are willing to speak to the media as authorities on particular subjects.
The Directory should help to raise the local, national and international profile of the University and of the research that takes place here.
This project has been carried out as part of the HEFCE ReachOut initiative. It was carried out in partnership by the Division of Research and Enterprise Development and the Public Relations Office. The software was developed by staff in Information Services.
Help with searching:
You can search the Directory of Experts in three ways:
Search by expertise
Enter the area of expertise you want to search on into the 'Search by expertise' box. The search will return not only results that contain the exact term but also results where the keyword is a part of the word eg if you search for 'vet' you will get results for 'veterinary' as well as 'vet'.
If you type the entry using double quotes " " only exact matches will be listed eg if you search on the term "Polymer" you will not get results for 'polymeric' only 'polymer'.
Auto suggest - When you type the search term in the box the search will provide an 'auto suggest' function trying to predict the term you are searching for and suggest similar alternatives.
Browse for an expert by keyword
Select the letter the subject starts with and the system will generate a list of all keywords starting with that letter in alphabetical order.
Browse for an expert by surname
Select the letter the expert's surname begins with and the system will generate a list of all experts in alphabetical order.
Information for University of Bristol Staff
If you would like to be included in the Directory of Experts, click on the login link on the menubar and follow the instructions on the screen. Detailed advice on creating your entry is given below.
Personal Details
Name, Job title, Department
These details are fed into the directory from the HR database (PIMS). If any of these are incorrect, please contact your relevant HR Operations team.
If you hold an honorary appointment with the University and require any of these details to be updated, please contact your local honorary staff administrator.
Personal web page
If you have a personal home page, you can add a link to your entry in the Directory of Experts by
completing the online form.
Work contact details [email, telephone number, alternative contact, mobile phone]
These details have been taken from the University Contact Directory. If any of your phone numbers
are incorrect, please contact the Contact Directory administrator for your department. If you do
not know your departmental Contact Directory administrator, a list is available online at
http://www.bris.ac.uk/contact/help/deptAdministrators.
If your email address is incorrect, please contact help-email@bristol.ac.uk.
If you do not want the media to make direct contact with you at work, click on 'media to
contact me via Public Relations Office'. Your contact details will not be displayed in the
directory and any media wishing to contact you will then approach the Public Relations Office
in the first instance.
Out-of-hours contact details
If you wish, you can enter a home or mobile phone number. This will only be visible to the
Public Relations Office, unless you click the box saying 'make it public'. The Public
Relations Office will not give this number to others without your permission.
Qualifications
These details are fed into the directory from the HR database (PIMS). If any of these are incorrect, please contact your relevant HR Operations team.
If you hold an honorary appointment with the University and require any of these qualifications to be updated or entered, please contact your local honorary staff administrator.
Professional Details
Membership of professional bodies
Please enter details of membership of professional bodies in full together with the abbreviation, e.g. The
Institution of Electrical Engineers [IEE], Medical Research Council [MRC].
Keywords
Please enter up to eight keywords or phrases that will help journalists find your entry if they
enter them as search criteria. The words or phrases will generally relate to your
subject areas, e.g. earthquakes, accountancy, Egyptology, Russian literature.
Please use lower case, except for proper nouns (e.g. place names) and acronyms (e.g. BBC).
Areas of expertise
Please write a short narrative to describe your research interests or expertise using no
more than 150 words. Your text needs to be concise and written in clear, jargon-free English.
It needs to be understood by a layperson, so please avoid complicated sentences. For example,
'I am researching how birds learn, the relationship between bird behaviour and hormones
and seasonal changes in behaviour and reproductive physiology. I am also interested in ways
of promoting public engagement with science.'
You can cut and paste from another application, e.g. Word, but you will lose any formatting.
Languages
Please specify languages other than English in which you could write an article or conduct an interview.
Media experience
Please use this space if you would like to give a general indication of your media
experience. This may be of interest to journalists.
Click 'save draft' if you wish to save your entry, but are not ready to submit it for
publication in the directory.
Click 'continue' if you wish to save your entry and proceed to the next stage.
Save expert details in a simple and easy way - Microformats in the Directory of Experts 
Microformats have been applied to certain areas within the University of Bristol Directory of Experts. This feature is available on pages showing individual expert details.
This means that if you have the appropriate software (e.g. The Operator plugin for Firefox) you can save contact details in a simple and easy way to your personal address book (e.g. Outlook, Mulberry, Gmail, Yahoo mail, etc).