Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Information Literacy on the Fly in 20 Minutes Twice

I always like it when a professor contacts me in advance and arranges for a class on a specific topic.  I have a standard plan that I use for all of my classes, but then at the end I cover the specific assignment.  Yesterday I received a frantic e-mail from a professor teaching two sections of a biophysics course.  He assigned students to find a paper discussing mutations, cancer or evolution that showed graphs and tables.  He reported that students were having problems finding this.  He asked me to visit these classes on very short notice.


It was the Ebsco Discover Service to the rescue.  I showed them how to do the search (mutations) and (statistical study).  I showed them how to limit to full text articles that are available in our library.  At that point they had to look at the articles in PDF to find if the article had what they needed.  I did this in 20 minutes.  The professor seemed to be satisfied.  As usually I advised the students to come to the reference desk if they need further assistance.

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