• Librarians as your consultants – “information literacy across the curriculum” - Your subject librarian is available to consult with you on on ideas for maintaining instructional continuity around research assignments and information literacy skills.  Librarians are also available to meet with you individually for training in using our research databases or other library resources.  Find out more here.
  

We ask you to please consult your subject librarian before bringing your class over to the library for research time so we can work with you to ensure an optimal learning environment.  The 1st floor computer workstations are for individual or small group drop-in use. The public service desk is staffed as such and cannot adequately accommodate classes.

• Reference services for you and your students – Ask Us a Question Librarians are available to help you and your students via live chat, email, phone, or by appointment.  Let us know how we can help!

• Off campus access to library resources - Make sure your students know how to access library resources from off-campus.

• Online tutorials & lectures - You can consult with your librarian to develop assignments based on these modules:

• Research 101 tutorial – this resources offers help students learn to develop topics and research questions, build effective searches, and find and evaluate information sources.
• UW Libraries tutorials - this suite of tutorials includes help on finding electronic books, full text articles online, theses and dissertations, and on specific library reference and periodical resources.
• Forum Network, Academic Earth, TED, and MITOpenCourseware offer online video and audio lectures.
  

• Citation Help - Your students can find MLA, APA, Chicago, and CBE citation help and style guides online.

• Other Instructional Continuity Resources: UW Bothell - UW Seattle

• Choosing and Formulating a Research Topic or Question - Have students watch this ‘concept mapping’ video and then create their own concept map using this worksheet. They can scan or take a picture of their map and post it online (via Blackboard, ANGEL, etc.). Have students comment on each other’s maps to ask questions and/or offer additional ideas.

• Searching Effectively for Information in Library Databases or Catalogs - If students are at the point of needing to start research for an assignment, have them watch this Boolean Tutorial, construct their own searches using Boolean, and try the searches out in the UW Libraries Catalog or a database.  Have students post their Boolean searches online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.) listing the details of a couple of books or articles they found and how the sources relate to their research topic/question.

• Finding Journal Articles in Library Databases - If students need to begin finding journal articles for their research they can use this Academic Search Complete tutorial.  Have students complete this worksheet or post their findings online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.) including citation information, brief annotations and descriptions of how the source(s) relates to their research topic/question along with some thoughts on how the source contributes to their path of inquiry.

• Evaluating Sources - Provide students with a source or have them find one to evaluate using these Evaluating Sources Criteria.  Have students post their source and responses online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.).  An alternative would be to provide students with two sources – one academic and one popular press – and complete the same exercise but also have them do some comparing and contrasting of the two considering the evaluation criteria.

• Analyzing Images - Have students find two images relevant to the course content, using the databases listed in the Library’s image guide, Image Databases & Resources (search tips for finding images are available in the guide). Ask students to read the visual literacy resources linked from the Evaluating Images page and use the guiding questions on the page to analyze and evaluate the images they have chosen. Students can post their images and evaluations online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.). Have students cite their images according to the guidelines on the image guide's Citing & Copyright page.

• Media Literacy - Ask students to find two news articles on a course theme, one in the New York Times (or another “mainstream” news source), and one from the Library’s Ethnic Newswatch or Alternative Press databases.   Have students post their findings and analysis online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.).    Questions prompts could include:

  • Can you detect any bias in the article? Does the story (seem to) support one or more point of view? How would you explore this further
  • Who are the major players or stakeholders? What different (and presumably conflicting) interests do they represent
  • What else would you like to know that the article doesn’t tell you? What sources would you go to in order to find answers to these questions? What (re)search strategy would you follow?

• Primary/Archival Research - Ask students to find two primary/archival sources in one of the Library’s many historical databases or a web archive.  Have students post their findings and analysis online (via Blackboard or ANGEL, etc.).  Question prompts could include:

  • Who is (are) the “author(s)” of your primary source?  Where and how was it produced, published, and/or archived?  What do you know about that site and why the source seemed significant there?  (Think about the sources’s and/or the site’s intended audience.)
  • Close-read your primary source.  Begin with the details, the things that catch your attention.  List those details.  How would you pull those details together in order to “read” the source?  What remains unclear?  What further questions do you want to ask about and of the source?
  • Or, assign one of these primary source worksheets from the National Archives