Session One (80 min.):

Introduction

• Librarian identifies him/herself.
• State the purpose of the session (connection to assignment).
• Outline what will be presented.

General Flow of Research:

• Gathering Background Information
• Often within the context of narrowing the topic and/or establishing a starting point for search
• Using specialized encyclopedias, dictionaries, almanacs, directories, etc. as appropriate to the seminar topic

Searching the Main Catalog
Explain the scope of the information covered in the Main Catalog (i.e. entire works held by the library such as books, videos, musical scores, journals, collections of manuscripts, etc.).

• May begin with a known item search or the Basic Search.
• Using keywords to express the concept in the student's own words:
• Often involves demonstrating the Guided Search.
• Demonstrate the essence of Boolean logic (often via the all of these and any of these options).
• More specialized techniques may be demonstrated as time and flow allow, including phrase, truncation, and wildcard searching.

Understanding the structure of the catalog record:

• Highlight particular fields, including author, title, publisher, date, and subject headings.
• Using subject headings to capture the concept as expressed by librarians (a.k.a. controlled vocabulary):
• Hierarchical structure from general to specific via sub-headings.
• Using headings to refine the concept and conduct follow-up searches.

Locating the Physical Item in the Library (Book-finding exercise.Note: this can be very time-consuming.)

• Students may discuss the items found either during the remaining session time, as part of an assignment before the next session, or as part of later class discussion.
• Good opportunity to introduce issues of evaluating the source based on relevance, reliability, authority, credibility, bias and timeliness.

Session Two (80 min.):

Recap of Previous Session

Searching Databases

• Explain the scope of the information covered in a database (i.e. journal articles, news articles, chapters of books, statistical publications, graphic images, etc.) as differs from the Main Catalog.
• Often demonstrated using one of the multi-disciplinary databases such as EBSCO Academic Search Premiere, Wilson OmniFile, ProQuest Research Library (other specific databases may be shown as appropriate to the workshop topic).

Demonstrate the same techniques as with the Main Catalog:

• Keyword searching.
• Operators.
• Fields in the database record.
• Subject descriptors.
• Emphasize using the help pages for specific details on using the particular database.

Open Searching Time (Allows students to search for material on their own topics while librarian(s) roams about assisting them; depends on how much time remains to the session. )

Invite Follow-up visits; remind them to schedule one-on-one appointments. (Alert them to the Research Consultations sign-up page.)

Remember to provide contact information!

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