LibGuides: The First Year Experience: Library Resources and Services: Library Instruction Requests

Library Instruction Requests

In-class Instruction, Presentations, Research Assignment Consultations, and more.

I offers synchronous and asynchronous instruction options, in-class instruction sessions, research consultations, tours, and more. Library instruction for first-year students may be focused on:

an introduction to the library services and resources,
research and information literacy,
digital life and wellness
or a combination.

I am also available for consultation in designing and creating effective and high-impact research assignments and content. These requests are for collaborating to design research assignments or activities tailored to your course or program for deeper and active learning.

Some content and activities I have designed include:

Library Mythbusters, Hashtag Keyword Brainstorm, Create a Search Strategy, Evaluate a source in 10 minutes, Digital Library Scavenger Hunt, Mini video lectures (5-8 minutes), Google Suite Workshop, Zine Workshop, and more. Browse example projects below.

Email gbarnes@mail.frenostate.edu to request in-class instruction, workshops, presentations, or research assignment consultations.

Library Tutorials
The Library Tutorials will help your students find, use, and evaluate information resources. Available tutorials include: Scholarly Articles, Plagiarism and Citing (basic), Preventing Plagiarism (advanced), Artificial Intelligence and Academic Work, and more. The tutorials are available in Canvas, and students can access them by self-enrolling in the Library Tutorials course.
First Year Research Guide
This is a research guide I created for students to reference and which I often use when teaching. It contains links and resources to help students create a research strategy, find and evaluate sources, create citations, and more.
UT Libraries Information Literacy Toolkit
If you need ideas for different approaches to information literacy, UT Libraries provides several Open Education Resource (OER) research assignments to use in your classroom.

Example Library Projects

A Librarian's Guide to Sparking Curiosity

Rather than treating personal and scholarly inquiry as separate, this 4-part module series is informed by research that finds students’ personal experiences and connections inform much of their scholarly curiosity. Intended for use with first-year students, we hope to spark continued discussions on how to encourage students to articulate their interests and practice reflective inquiry. Want to include the modules in your course? Email Ginny Barnes, First Year Student Success Librarian at gbarnes@mail.fresnostate.edu

The four modules include:

Module 1: Cultivating a Beginner's Mind

Module 2: What it Means to Be a Content Creator

Module 3: Joining our Scholarly Community

Module 4: Preserving Our Cultural Record

Digital Tools in Life, Learning, and Wellness

Presentation slide deck within the FYE GSuite Workshop that address the integration of digital tools in learning, life, and wellness. Topics and resources shared included self-directed learning, information access, personal information management, organization, and setting digital boundaries.

Padlet with Student Google Site websites posted

FYE GSUITE Workshop

Students' Google Site Projects created in the FYE GSUITE 2022 Workshop, a three-hour workshop intended to familiarize students with Google Suite apps, collaborative cloud computing, and self-directed and peer learning.

mixed media art piece, includes a cut out black and white, heart-shaped image of a family with the words

Dogs for Democracy Zine, 2019

Excerpt from Dogs for Democracy, a collaborative zine created in September 2019 for National Voter Registration Day. Students and the campus community created art responding to the prompt: why does voting matter. Read the full zine on ScholarWorks.

Dogs for Democracy Zine, 2019

Digital Mindfullness Workshop, 2021

Slide deck from a Digital Mindfullness Workshop hosted for Off-Campus Student Life. The presentation included exercises and resources to reframe our relationship with the Internet and social media culture.

Web of hastags links to an image of students

Hashtag Brainstorm Activity

In this information literacy activity, students practiced free association 'tagging' to practice generating keywords for database searches. In creating tags, students also discovered various ways to narrow, broaden, or explore a topic as different students created different hashtags for the image, reflecting their different perspectives and associations with the subject matter.

Write Your Own Ethics Code

This activity supported students understanding of information evaluation by situating it in real-world professional context. After reviewing ethics codes from two professional associations (journalism and libraries) each student created one of their own personal information policies.