Every senior at Haverford College writes a thesis or its equivalent, conducting independent research with guidance from faculty and librarians. Students critically engage in investigative work in archives, field studies, and labs. In this article, librarians explore the way anthropology and history thesis writers do research to define paths toward…

Little is known about the intellectual journey of advanced undergraduates engaged in the research process. Moreover, few studies of this population of library users include students' personal essays as a point of analysis in their scholarly pursuits. To gain insights into the research trajectory of apprentice researchers at the University of…

This article explains how the South Piedmont Community College librarians educated faculty members about how they guide student use of the library and how it is advantageous for them to require high-quality resources for student papers. As documented by observations at SPCC and in the library literature, students use the tools they know to find…

By first reassessing the role of search in the literacy event of the lower division undergraduate paper, this article argues that searching is not a lower-order mental activity but a concurrent, integral component of the research-writing process. This conclusion has large implications for information literacy instructional design, and several…

La Trobe University Library has embarked on an institution-wide project with the objective of enabling students to engage with scholarly and credible information from the first year. This initiative by the library is in response to La Trobe curriculum reform. In particular, it aligns information literacy with the inquiry/research graduate…

This paper will examine the learning needs of millennial students, a generation different from any previous generation, so librarians should adjust their teaching methods to accommodate their needs. Should we, as librarians, consider changing our reference services--the way we present instruction and the materials that we order for the library?…

This study investigates librarians' satisfaction with general interdisciplinary databases for undergraduate research and explores possibilities for improving these databases. Results from a national survey suggest that librarians at a variety of institutions are relatively satisfied overall with the content and usability of general,…

Googlitis, the overreliance on search engines for research and the resulting development of poor searching skills, is a recognized problem among today's students. Google is not an effective research tool because, in addition to encouraging keyword searching at the expense of more powerful subject searching, it only accesses the Surface Web and is…

Faculty and librarians agree on the qualities of a good research question. However, in an exploratory study, they differed on when students should develop their research question. While librarians stated that students should develop their question early, first-year writing faculty advocated for delaying the development of the research question.…

Working with first-year students at Purdue University, the author, a composition instructor, joined efforts with librarian Alexius Smith-Macklin to explore the efficacy of a collaborative approach to freshman writing instruction at the university level. Combining expertise from the Purdue programs of English education, theory and cultural studies,…

Changes in pedagogy, technology, and resources have forced tremendous change in library instruction in the United States over the past few years. One educational factor has changed even more than learning theory or the technology we use to apply and explore it, and that factor is the characteristics of our user populations. Increasing diversity in…

Discusses the development of research skills through online searching by secondary school students, and compares online and optical data disk systems. The factors compared include cost, currency, subject areas, number of uses, search time, preparation needed, search methods, help needed, and alternative uses of the equipment. (CLB)

This paper addresses several problems relating to the use of research materials and information resources by graduate students and proposes teaching educational research skills in an introductory-level graduate research course, "Information Resources for Educational Research," to be taught by the Memphis State University (MSU) Library…

Describes personalized research clinics (PRC) programs at three diverse institutions: Gettysburg College (Pennsylvania), Marquette University (Wisconsin), and Bowling Green State University (Ohio). Addresses logistics, publicity methods, program analysis, and assessment issues, and weighs the benefits of the labor-intensive service against other…

Interactive electronic tutorials offer flexibility in delivering library instruction; however, questions linger regarding their effectiveness compared to traditional librarian-led classroom lectures. This study examines a tutorial introducing health science students to the Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature database. Half the…