First-year undergraduates are generally considered to be incoming students. First-year students generally receive orientation to research skills by completing the library’s web tutorial and/or attending an instructional session in the library.
1) Students will understand that information can be found in a variety of sources and will recognize how that understanding can help determine the direction of his/her search for specific information.
a) Students can recognize the differences between books, journals, newspapers, and websites as sources of information.
b) Students will be able to develop a simple search strategy to assist them in pursuing their research.
c) Students will be able to identify the requirements of a given research assignment and use those parameters to guide the direction and type of research conducted.
2) Students will understand the importance of the organizational content, bibliographic structure, function and use of information sources.
a) Students will be able to define the difference between popular and scholarly sources.
b) Students will be able to select appropriate resources based on the timeliness of the resources.
3) Students can identify useful information from the library’s catalog, online journal indexes and other information systems.
a) Students will be able to perform keyword, author and title searches in the library’s catalog.
b) Students will be able to retrieve information on a given topic from an online journal index using a keyword search.
c) Students will be able to develop an appropriate research strategy for electronic resources using the logical operator “and”.
d) Students will be able to search the Web to identify specific sources of information.
e) Students will be able to evaluate Web resources, using a brief list of criteria.
4) Students will understand the way collections of information sources are organized and accessed.
a) Students will be able to determine if a specific item is physically available at Jackson Library or other locations listed in the library’s catalog.
b) Students will be able to determine if UNCG provides electronic access to a specific resource.
5) Citing sources
a) Students will be able to determine when they must cite the work of another author in their research.
b) Students will be able to identify the information required to cite a work completely.
c) Students will be able to apply the rules of a specific approach to citing sources (ex. MLA, APA) in creating a reference list or bibliography.
