Greenfield Community College

Library Services for Faculty

Research guides and tutorials

GCC librarians maintain Research Guides in a variety of subject areas. Faculty may request that we create a research guide for a specific course or assignment, or for a campus event. We find that course and assignment based research guides are most effective in conjunction with a research instruction session in the Library. To discuss the creation of a research guide for your course, contact Ellen Carey at careye@gcc.mass.edu or 775-1834.

Online research tutorials

We are preparing to develop online tutorials for many basic GCC Library resources and services. In the meantime, GCC students, faculty, and staff may benefit from the many excellent tutorials created by college and university librarians that are freely available on the Internet. Tutorial topics include learning to do library research, understanding how libraries are organized, learning how to search paricular databases, learning to conduct Internet research, and improving their information literacy skills in general. 

Some of these tutorials are created for specific institutions, but some are more generic and could be useful to students at any academic institution.

For instance, the U. of Massachusetts at Amherst Library has created a tutorial for their students that could be very useful for our students because the information in the "Finding Books" section is based on the same online catalog system as the catalog at GCC and the skills taught will transfer to our system.  In addition, the "Finding Articles" section uses the Expanded Academic database to demonstrate search strategies.  This database is also available at GCC through the Info Trac search service.  When the students reach the point in the tutorial where they are restricted from using the database at UMass Amherst, they can simply switch to the database at GCC to practice their search skills.  The rest of the information found in this tutorial, "Defining Your Research Topic", "The World of Information", "Using the Web", and "Evaluating Information" would be useful for students doing research at any institution.

The UMass Amherst tutorial is called Merlin:  http://www.library.umass.edu/merlin/directory.html

If Merlin is unavailable or you feel it is too difficult for your students, try this tutorial from California State University:  http://library.csumb.edu/instruction/icmodules/

Consider utilizing some of the other tutorials listed below, or segments of the tutorials, to:

• prepare your students for their first visit to the library and library instruction
• to assess the current skill level of your students
• to reinforce the skills taught during library instruction, or
• to assist your students with improving their research skills
• to create your own assignments that assess the information literacy skills of your students

Library research tutorials
Sites marked with an asterisk (*) include some content unique to a specific institution--it is suggested that you use the modules that are generic or stop at the point where the material is individualized for a particular institution.

Boolean Searching Tutorial
*CORE:  Comprehensive Online Research Education (Purdue U.)
CSUMB Information Competence Tutorials (California State U., Monterey Bay)
*Guide to Library Research (Duke U.)
Information Competence Tutorial (Cal Poly State U.)
Information Literacy Tutorial (5 Colleges of Ohio)
*Information Literacy Tutorial (Minneapolis Community & Technical College)(includes quizzes)
*Information Literacy Tutorial (UMass Boston)
*Library and Internet Research Tutorial (SUNY & Ulster State Community College)
Library of Congress Call Number System Tutorial (U. of Pittsburgh)
Magician:  Library Research Tutorial (U. of California, Riverside)(includes graphics and quizzes)
OASIS:  Online Advancement of Student Information Skills (San Francisco State U.)(utilizes the same library catalog system as the GCC Library and includes examples)
Pilot (UMass Boston)(includes quizzes with immediate feedback)
Pretest of Library Skills (MCTC)(have students complete this online pretest prior to their visit to the library)
*Quick Study (U. of Minnesota)
*Searchpath (W. Michigan U.)
TILT:  Interactive Library Tutorial (U. of Texas)

Internet Tutorials

Boolean Searching on the Internet (U. of Albany)
Finding Information on the Internet:  a Tutorial (UC Berkeley)
Internet Navigator (an online, self paced, independent study course created by Utah academic librarians)
Internet Tutorials (U. of Albany)
A Modular Approach to Teaching/Learning the World Wide Web (Widener U.)
Sink or Swim:  Internet Search Tools and Techniques (Okanagan U.  College Library)
Specialty Databases (Ohio State)(includes quizzes)