Berkeleyan: A newspaper for faculty and staff at UC Berkeley


About
Subscribe
Contact

Berkeleyan HomeSearch BerkeleyanBerkeleyan ArchiveUCB NewsUCB Calendar

 This Week's Stories:

 

Regular Features

 

Campus Teaching Library Offers Tailor-Made Literacy Instruction

By Tamara Keith, Public Affairs
posted September 9, 1998

The campus Teaching Library is offering tailor-made library literacy instruction that can make life easier for professors and students alike.

"If students become literate on the catalogs, they get a real step up on doing research and writing papers," said Ellen Meltzer, head of the Teaching Library. "The earlier in their academic careers they take one of these classes the better."

Professors who feel their students could use some help finding research materials in the Moffit and Doe libraries can bring their students to a library training session in place of a regular class meeting or discussion section.

In the training sessions, library staff use class research assignments to show how the libraries' printed and computer resources can be used to make students' research projects more complete and relevant.

Professor Leon Litwack has been sending his History 7B students to these library training sessions for years. His students are required to complete an in-depth research paper including often hard-to-find primary source documents. The library training sessions help the students figure out how to approach their research and how to choose the right information when it comes time to write their papers.

"The Teaching Library classes helped a great deal to make the papers research based," said Charles Postel, a graduate student in US history who was head teaching assistant for History 7B in fall 1997. "It helped the students get their hands on the primary sources they needed."

The Teaching Library offers various seminars and drop-in classes for faculty, staff and students throughout the school year. For information about the learning opportunities offered by the Teaching Library, consult the following web address: http://library.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/.


[ Back to top ]

.

UCB Home

This site is produced and maintained by the Office of Public Affairs, University of California, Berkeley.
Copyright 1998, The Regents of the University of California.
For comments concerning this web service please e-mail
berkeleyan@pa.urel.berkeley.edu