http://www.simpson.edu/faculty/teaching/las/libraryresearch.html

Objectives: As a result of LAS students should:

Meet a librarian
Formulate a basic search strategy
Use various library resources

Implementation:

Develop an assignment in conjunction with the Instruction Librarian, Mary Peterson. She will work with you to tailor your class’s session (or sessions) to your specific assignment. Ideally, she will be helping your students develop the research component of a significant project rather than simply giving them a tour of the library. Whatever the case, be sure to provide her with a copy of the final version of your assignment at least one week prior to your visit(s).

Project Models:

Option 1: Research Log
Option 2: Annotated Bibliography
Option 3: The Piece of Garbage
Option 4: Other

Option 1: Research Log

A research log documents the steps a student has followed in doing library research. The log should be comprehensive, including both their successes and their failures. In the log, students document how they found sources, which sources they consulted, which keywords or headings they searched, and how long they spent on each step. The logs can be organized chronologically or alphabetically by the source consulted. As with the annotated bibliography, students will need to include a set number of sources from each of several categories. Research logs are particularly useful at helping students to understand the time and effort involved in doing library research in college. In addition, research logs can help students to become more aware of the choices they must make when they do research.

Option 2: Annotated Bibliography

So what might students be required to submit after the library research stage of their project? One possibility is to require students to write an Annotated Bibliography. Students could be asked to identify (using an appropriate citation format) a specified number of sources in each of several categories. These categories are provided to ensure that students become familiar with the wide variety of different types of resources available in Dunn Library and through Dunn’s website. Following the citation information, students would need to write some sort of annotation for that source. This annotation might be purely descriptive or it might be evaluative. It might be brief (1-2 sentences) or it might be a little longer (1-2 paragraphs). Be sure to clearly communicate to your students what an annotated bibliography is and what type of information you want them to include in their annotated bibliography.

Creating an annotated bibliography requires students to learn to do a literature search, to briefly summarize their sources, and how to write a bibliography or reference section. Annotated bibliographies can be assigned as one step in the process of writing a research paper or as a final product in their own right. If your course goals do not include teaching students to synthesize sources into a lengthy paper, asking students to write an annotated bibliography might make more sense than having them write a lengthy research paper.

Before students go to the library to find sources in each of their required categories, they need to have a topic that they are researching. This could be done by asking students to select a topic from a list of possibilities related to the disciplinary content of the course.

Students could be given a choice of historical figures in a discipline. The trick to starting with having a person as a topic is that students might have difficulty finding information about that person in all the different categories. One solution to this problem is to direct students to round out their bibliography by finding sources about topics relevant to that person’s professional (or personal) life.

Option 3: The Piece of Garbage

Nicolas Proctor designed this assignment for use in his LAS section of Western Traditions in 2006.

LAS LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT

Schedule a class visit to the library when a librarian is available for at least an hour.

Meet with your class in the upstairs Craven room so the librarian can give a brief (4-7 minute) overview of library resources. You may opt to dispense with this element entirely.

Distribute research topics to your students. If possible, these should be related to one another in some way. Overarching themes like “elements of ancient Roman culture” or “models of childhood development” are good. This sends students in different directions, but it keeps their searches related, so they keep talking with one another. Depending upon your goals, it may be better to assign these topics to small teams or it may be better to have students develop their own topics in consultation with you.

Tie the research topics to a writing assignment that is due in the near future. This gives their library searches direction and relevance. The writing assignment should include a bibliography. This helps make citations a habit at the outset. You may even want to require an annotated bibliography so that you can get a clearer idea about how they read and assessed the sources once they located them.

Explain that you will need to approve four different sources for each and every topic by the end of your library visit. This gives the assignment immediacy. I have students find at least one of each of the following:

Book – This gets them into the stacks. For the true novice, it also provides an introduction to the Dewey decimal system. As they begin to work on the writing assignment, most of them will discover that this turns out to be the most useful source of them all. Imagine that.

Scholarly article – This acquaints them with the closeted and recondite world of academic journals, and it gets them to use search engines other than Google. A staggering number of journals are now available through various online subscription services that are available through our library website. Even if you are already a capable user of such services, it can be a good idea to send the students to the librarian when they are tracking these down. This mandates interactions with the librarian, which makes them more approachable for later consultations. It also keeps your visit up-to-date with recent library database acquisitions. Even when the search is discipline-specific, the librarian will know more about the available databases than you.

Popular press article – Students often find these sources through online databases too (e.g. Nexis), but they may also find it using a mainstream search engine (e.g. Google). Tracking these down helps draw a distinction between scholarly work and pieces that are written for a wide audience (and the all too rare pieces that bridge this gap). As they work on the writing assignment many of them will find that these articles are initially very useful, but as their understanding deepens, they usually don’t end up relying upon them much. This is a nice lesson about knowledge in depth.

Piece of garbage – This reminds them that much of what is available is not actually worth reading. Invariably, they find these sources on the Internet. Assessing the failings of these sources provides a good opportunity to talk about the virtues over sources that pass through various institutional filters (peer review, editors, etc.) as opposed to those that are simply posted online.

Even though I only require four sources, it is amazing how many students march out of the library at the end of our visit with a big stack of books. They are beaming. It is like a treasure hunt that way.

As the students fan out to begin their searches, position yourself by the upstairs set of computer consoles while the librarian gets ready to field questions by the downstairs consoles. I’ve found that we both spend much of our time helping students assemble good search terms. For a supposedly Internet-savvy population, most students are remarkably poor at crafting these. They are often shocked that something like “Homer Drinking” does not lead them to valuable information about wine consumption in the Iliad. Instead, it probably leads to some sort of episode guide for The Simpsons.

Brace yourself. It is exciting to see the amount of frantic energy students put into this assignment, but it can be exhausting. They charge into the stacks and pepper you with questions about different websites. Because a bottleneck quickly forms around you they are forced to consult with the librarian (that’s good). This creates a second bottleneck, which leads to another important breakthrough: the students begin to advise one another on effective search techniques and available sources. How gratifying -- they’ve started to form a learning community.

Arrange for some debriefing at your next class meeting (or, if you have a long class, at the end of the period). It can be a good idea to ask them to bring all of the sources they found with them. I try to touch on these subjects:

How sources are created
The use and abuse of the Internet
The value of good, old fashioned books
Plagiarism
The usefulness of citations & bibliographies
How to manage a big pile of source material without going mad
The usefulness of their peers

Together these provide a good set-up for the writing assignment, which should be due within the week.

A good closer for the debriefing is, “What is the worst piece of crap you found? How did you find it? How did you know it was a piece of crap?” Often, the answers to these questions can be boiled down to: “Internet. Internet. Internet.”

Option 4: Other

Develop your own library assignment in conjunction with the Instruction Librarian. Just make sure that the assignment asks students to do the following things:

Define or choose a topic
Locate and use the library website
Search the catalog, EBSCO host, and other online resources
Locate books and articles online and in the library
Reflect on what they learned about the information resources at Simpson, and what would be helpful in the future to learn about the library and research.


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Library Research Objectives: As a result of LAS students should: Meet a librarian Formulate a basic search strategy Use various library resources Implementation: Develop an assignment in conjunction with the Instruction Librarian, Mary Peterson. She will work with you to tailor your class’s session (or sessions) to your specific assignment. Ideally, she will be helping your students develop the research component of a significant project rather than simply giving them a tour of the library. Whatever the case, be sure to provide her with a copy of the final version of your assignment at least one week prior to your visit(s). Project Models: Option 1: Research Log Option 2: Annotated Bibliography Option 3: The Piece of Garbage Option 4: Other Option 1: Research Log A research log documents the steps a student has followed in doing library research. The log should be comprehensive, including both their successes and their failures. In the log, students document how they found sources, which sources they consulted, which keywords or headings they searched, and how long they spent on each step. The logs can be organized chronologically or alphabetically by the source consulted. As with the annotated bibliography, students will need to include a set number of sources from each of several categories. Research logs are particularly useful at helping students to understand the time and effort involved in doing library research in college. In addition, research logs can help students to become more aware of the choices they must make when they do research. Option 2: Annotated Bibliography So what might students be required to submit after the library research stage of their project? One possibility is to require students to write an Annotated Bibliography. Students could be asked to identify (using an appropriate citation format) a specified number of sources in each of several categories. These categories are provided to ensure that students become familiar with the wide variety of different types of resources available in Dunn Library and through Dunn’s website. Following the citation information, students would need to write some sort of annotation for that source. This annotation might be purely descriptive or it might be evaluative. It might be brief (1-2 sentences) or it might be a little longer (1-2 paragraphs). Be sure to clearly communicate to your students what an annotated bibliography is and what type of information you want them to include in their annotated bibliography. Creating an annotated bibliography requires students to learn to do a literature search, to briefly summarize their sources, and how to write a bibliography or reference section. Annotated bibliographies can be assigned as one step in the process of writing a research paper or as a final product in their own right. If your course goals do not include teaching students to synthesize sources into a lengthy paper, asking students to write an annotated bibliography might make more sense than having them write a lengthy research paper. Before students go to the library to find sources in each of their required categories, they need to have a topic that they are researching. This could be done by asking students to select a topic from a list of possibilities related to the disciplinary content of the course. Students could be given a choice of historical figures in a discipline. The trick to starting with having a person as a topic is that students might have difficulty finding information about that person in all the different categories. One solution to this problem is to direct students to round out their bibliography by finding sources about topics relevant to that person’s professional (or personal) life. Option 3: The Piece of Garbage Nicolas Proctor designed this assignment for use in his LAS section of Western Traditions in 2006. LAS LIBRARY ASSIGNMENT Schedule a class visit to the library when a librarian is available for at least an hour. Meet with your class in the upstairs Craven room so the librarian can give a brief (4-7 minute) overview of library resources. You may opt to dispense with this element entirely. Distribute research topics to your students. If possible, these should be related to one another in some way. Overarching themes like “elements of ancient Roman culture” or “models of childhood development” are good. This sends students in different directions, but it keeps their searches related, so they keep talking with one another. Depending upon your goals, it may be better to assign these topics to small teams or it may be better to have students develop their own topics in consultation with you. Tie the research topics to a writing assignment that is due in the near future. This gives their library searches direction and relevance. The writing assignment should include a bibliography. This helps make citations a habit at the outset. You may even want to require an annotated bibliography so that you can get a clearer idea about how they read and assessed the sources once they located them. Explain that you will need to approve four different sources for each and every topic by the end of your library visit. This gives the assignment immediacy. I have students find at least one of each of the following: Book – This gets them into the stacks. For the true novice, it also provides an introduction to the Dewey decimal system. As they begin to work on the writing assignment, most of them will discover that this turns out to be the most useful source of them all. Imagine that. Scholarly article – This acquaints them with the closeted and recondite world of academic journals, and it gets them to use search engines other than Google. A staggering number of journals are now available through various online subscription services that are available through our library website. Even if you are already a capable user of such services, it can be a good idea to send the students to the librarian when they are tracking these down. This mandates interactions with the librarian, which makes them more approachable for later consultations. It also keeps your visit up-to-date with recent library database acquisitions. Even when the search is discipline-specific, the librarian will know more about the available databases than you. Popular press article – Students often find these sources through online databases too (e.g. Nexis), but they may also find it using a mainstream search engine (e.g. Google). Tracking these down helps draw a distinction between scholarly work and pieces that are written for a wide audience (and the all too rare pieces that bridge this gap). As they work on the writing assignment many of them will find that these articles are initially very useful, but as their understanding deepens, they usually don’t end up relying upon them much. This is a nice lesson about knowledge in depth. Piece of garbage – This reminds them that much of what is available is not actually worth reading. Invariably, they find these sources on the Internet. Assessing the failings of these sources provides a good opportunity to talk about the virtues over sources that pass through various institutional filters (peer review, editors, etc.) as opposed to those that are simply posted online. Even though I only require four sources, it is amazing how many students march out of the library at the end of our visit with a big stack of books. They are beaming. It is like a treasure hunt that way. As the students fan out to begin their searches, position yourself by the upstairs set of computer consoles while the librarian gets ready to field questions by the downstairs consoles. I’ve found that we both spend much of our time helping students assemble good search terms. For a supposedly Internet-savvy population, most students are remarkably poor at crafting these. They are often shocked that something like “Homer Drinking” does not lead them to valuable information about wine consumption in the Iliad. Instead, it probably leads to some sort of episode guide for The Simpsons. Brace yourself. It is exciting to see the amount of frantic energy students put into this assignment, but it can be exhausting. They charge into the stacks and pepper you with questions about different websites. Because a bottleneck quickly forms around you they are forced to consult with the librarian (that’s good). This creates a second bottleneck, which leads to another important breakthrough: the students begin to advise one another on effective search techniques and available sources. How gratifying -- they’ve started to form a learning community. Arrange for some debriefing at your next class meeting (or, if you have a long class, at the end of the period). It can be a good idea to ask them to bring all of the sources they found with them. I try to touch on these subjects: How sources are created The use and abuse of the Internet The value of good, old fashioned books Plagiarism The usefulness of citations & bibliographies How to manage a big pile of source material without going mad The usefulness of their peers Together these provide a good set-up for the writing assignment, which should be due within the week. A good closer for the debriefing is, “What is the worst piece of crap you found? How did you find it? How did you know it was a piece of crap?” Often, the answers to these questions can be boiled down to: “Internet. Internet. Internet.” Option 4: Other Develop your own library assignment in conjunction with the Instruction Librarian. Just make sure that the assignment asks students to do the following things: Define or choose a topic Locate and use the library website Search the catalog, EBSCO host, and other online resources Locate books and articles online and in the library Reflect on what they learned about the information resources at Simpson, and what would be helpful in the future to learn about the library and research.
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