Basic Library Skills Instruction

[Sarah Glassmeyer]

How are you teaching basic library skills* to your patrons (law students, lawyers or the public)? Handouts? Web tutorials? CALI? Is it included in 1st Year Legal research classes? Are you even covering it at all?

*By basic library skills I mean "how to search an OPAC", "how to decipher a LOC call number" "when google is appropriate and when it is not", etc.

[Karen Storin Linitz]

We have so little time with our students in first year LRW, that we can't cover much of the basics. We try to give a little bit on tours, a little in journal training (we have 1L's doing cite-checking here - and that's a whole other issue!), a little in class, and put research guides on our website that they probably never read. Of course we teach it over and over again at the desk - not the most efficient way to cover it, but probably effective for those who take the time to ask. We are currently working on implementing online quickie video tutorials (2-3 minutes) that will cover these topics. We're using camtasia and captivate to produce them. However, since we are a) switching to Vista and b) migrating our entire website to a CMS this summer, I suspect these may not be ready to launch for fall - though I really do hope for the best!

[Kyle C]

We have the law librarians create and write a portion of the 1L LRW curriculum. These introductory library assignments teach them how to use the OPAC, other legal databases, and even LOC numbers. We also do an assignment that makes them browse the shelves to determine the different call no's for Property vs. Contracts in order to discover the treatises on the shelf. We also do several small group law library tours to the whole 1L class that introduces them to the collections and reveals the sources they will use for their first assignments (i.e. where are the Legal Encyclopedias, where is Black's and Burton's, etc.)

We also offer basic introductory handouts and post them on a special Law Library 1L website - which has "one stop shopping" for many of their introductory questions.

[Nolan Wright]

Were the videos more successful than the guides?

Karen Storin Linitz said:

We have so little time with our students in first year LRW, that we can't cover much of the basics. We try to give a little bit on tours, a little in journal training (we have 1L's doing cite-checking here - and that's a whole other issue!), a little in class, and put research guides on our website that they probably never read. Of course we teach it over and over again at the desk - not the most efficient way to cover it, but probably effective for those who take the time to ask. We are currently working on implementing online quickie video tutorials (2-3 minutes) that will cover these topics. We're using camtasia and captivate to produce them. However, since we are a) switching to Vista and b) migrating our entire website to a CMS this summer, I suspect these may not be ready to launch for fall - though I really do hope for the best!