Susan,
You don't say where you are, what level these student are, and what kind of
library facilities you have, so it is difficult to provide you with a useful
answer, but here are a few hints. Here, where there is an online computer in
every dorm room, and labs scattered all around, I may be getting ready to
give you a lot of useless information. What I'll try to do is recall what it
was like six years ago when I was 'way ahead of the curve, and go from
there. (I'm still ahead, just not as far. My 3-credit Psychology in Context
course devotes about one-half to literature searching and summarizing
journal articles.) Can I send this stuff to you? Sorry, it is in
WordPerfect 5.1 and while I could send it you probably couldn't read it.
1. Literature searching cannot be taught in a vacuum. Your idea of a
scavenger hunt may be a good place to start. I used to do that with teams of
three when I had a knowledgeable and cooperative library staff a few years
ago.
2. Years ago, when PsycLIT on CD-ROM was in its infancy, APA came out
with a student workbook and teacher's manual. They
were very good for an APA product. There was one early exercise on how to
design a search which, with modification, I still use.
3. Returning to the "not in a vacuum" idea, use of APA's Thesaurus of
Psychological Index Terms needs to be confronted before they go on line to
start searching. If one can translate everyday notions into the appropriate
psychobabble by which journal articles listed, one saves lots of time.
4. Depending on the system you are using Boolean operators need to be
introduced very early. I got so spoiled using my own Current Contents on
CD-ROM where I could get six-hundred references for a key word, and then
narrow the search to my heart's content that I fell into some bad habits 6-7
years ago. Now, I write it out, complete with Boolean, and get the five or
six that are really relevant online and print them out in about half the
time it used to take.
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan Freedman-Noa [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Friday, November 19, 1999 11:48 AM
To: TIPS
Subject: library usage feedback?
I'm setting up some programs to teach undergrads how to do library research.
Some of these folks haven't ever been online - so I'm thinking that it may
be better to have a very simpled prgram of how to" outlined - rather than
bombarding them with all the various places to search for info. Also -
although others have huge lists of websites etc. which they use, for
undergraduates I'm still partial to the simplistic approach of identifying
what they want using psychinfo and learning how to then get a hold of it.
then perhaps moving on to websites of authors or test which the've
identified .... any feedback?
I'm trying to set up some scavenger hunts in the school library for
psychology (and incidentally, education).
I'd be very grateful for any information from anyone else whose done this.
