Guide for Faculty

• Every FYS has an assigned librarian who will contact the instructor about library support.
• Librarians work with instructors to integrate research skills into the FYS through library sessions, and also assignment design and consultation.
• There is no general library orientation for all first-years, so the library session in the FYS may be your students' first experience in the library.
• We are happy to give students an orientation to the library, but the most impactful sessions are directly related to writing assignments and occur later in the semester, when students are actively grappling with research.
• We encourage multiple library sessions over the course of the semester. Options for sessions are listed below.
• Sessions can be held in the regular classroom or in the library instruction room (Ladd 148).

Postulates for Library Instruction

• Research is a complex, non-linear, and recursive process.
• Research skills, like writing skills, are developmental.
• The need for critical evaluation of information sources is even more essential today as the number and ease of access of such sources increase.
• We follow the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education for threshold concepts in digital and information literacy.

Library involvement is especially important for:

• First Year Seminars
• Research Methods Courses
• Junior/Senior Seminars
• Independent Study
• Theses, Regular and Honors

Our services

• Consulting in advance about resources for or approaches to the assignment(s) you’re considering. For some advice on designing assignments, you might want to look at sites from Dickinson College, the University of Washington or Gustavus Adolphus College.
• Preparing a course-specific research guide.
• Meeting with groups or individual students by appointment to work on their projects.
• Tailoring session(s) around your course-specific needs.

Examples of the in-class instruction we provide are:

• Navigating the many library resources available.
• Identifying and working with appropriate and authoritative sources.
• Distinguishing between and accessing different types of content (e.g. scholarly manuscripts, primary sources, peer-reviewed literature, subject-specific datasets, etc,).
• Acknowledging sources (e.g. when, how, and why acknowledgment is appropriate, specific citation style support, citation manager software instruction).

For a Library instructional session, we:

• Need at least a week’s lead time.
• Appreciate your attending with your class.
• Know that timing is critical and needs to be contextual.
• Emphasize actively involving students in learning.

Contact

• Archives/Special Collections -- Pat Webber, 786-6428, jwebber@bates.edu
• Librarian Subject Specialist listing

We construct these Subject and Course guides to reveal library resources appropriate for both Departments/Programs and specific courses.  We are very open to suggestions that would make them more helpful.

Examples of Course guides include:

• Bio 128:  Out of the Sea
• AMAV 288: Visualizing Race
• FYS 422: Strangers in the House

Be sure to look over the How To guides which might help with your instruction or assignment emphasis, e.g., SPSS or R, to mention a few.