Academic research is a complicated practice. Students—inexperienced with its myriad and peculiar demands—may struggle to focus a topic or select appropriate sources or evaluate the quality and relevance of their choices. To become proficient, they need plenty of practice.

Together, we can develop well-planned and well-timed library instruction, offered on a one-time or semester-long basis, which intentionally provides that kind of practice.

When you request instruction, please:

• Plan the instruction around a specific activity or assignment.
• Think about specific learning objectives for the session(s). Focused outcomes, like “Explore general information sources to gain knowledge about a topic” or “Differentiate popular and academic sources of evidence,” maximize the value of instruction.  
• Determine what students may need to know or complete before the session(s). For example, prior to a lesson on searching for evidence, students could explore general information sources and develop a concept map.
• Consider your role in the session(s). Your participation reinforces the importance of the instruction to students.
• Think about using the learning objectives to assess the impact of the session (or sessions).

To arrange and discuss library instruction, please call (717-771-4024) or email (jmb7609@psu.edu). You are also welcome to stop by my office.

Below are links to help you integrate the Credo Information Literacy Modules into your courses.

Have questions or need help? Please contact Joel Burkholder.

These tutorials are new to Penn State. If you use them, please help us evaluate them with this quick survey

In development.

University Libraries sponsors BrowZine, a service that allows you to browse, read, and monitor scholarly journals on your computer or mobile device. You can add journals to a personal bookshelf and save articles to read at a later time.

To use this service, you can download the app for iOS or Android or use it from your computer via BrowZine’s website.

See how this might help your students find a concept or topic to write about for an assignment . . . 

I was browsing through the latest issue of the Journal of Marketing Research, which at the time was Volume 55, Issue 4 (2018). The first article in this issue is titled "When Showrooming Increases Retailer Profit."  Since I didn't have any idea what showrooming was, I clicked on the article and found out, from reading the abstract, that showrooming is "the phenomenon of consumers visiting a brick-and-mortar (B&M) store to learn about products but then buying online to obtain lower prices" (Kuksov & Liao, p. 459). Since most of us have probably done this at one time or another - this could be a good topic for a concept assignment! It turns out our York campus library even has a book on it - More Than a Showroom: Strategies for Winning Back Online Shoppers.

BrowZine automatically detects your library’s location. If you are on campus, you will not be asked for your Penn State Access Account user ID and password. If you are off-campus, you will be required to authenticate to access the journals through BrowZine. Choose “Penn State University Libraries” from the list, and supply your Access Account user ID and password when prompted.

For an overview of BrowZine, watch the video introduction.

BrowZine is used for keeping current on topics in your field and for browsing issues of journals. You can't search BrowZine for topics, articles, and titles, but it's a great way to get ideas. Use it on your computer, your tablet, or your phone.

While you do not have to have an account to use BrowZine, you will need to create one in order to use the personalization feature of My Bookshelf and My Articles. I think these features are really useful and well worth creating the free account.

As you find interesting journals in your field, click ADD TO MY BOOKSHELF. You have 4 Bookcases available, each with 4 shelves (holding 4 books per shelf), meaning you can store up to 64 journals.

I don't think arranging your journals on your bookshelves is very intuitive, so here's my attempt to make sense of it for you!

When a journal is added to your bookshelf, it automatically is placed on the next available open slot on My Bookshelf. You will then need to click on the My Bookshelf tab to move the title to a new slot, if you want to organize your titles.

For example, when I added the American Journal of Education to My Bookshelf, it was added to the second shelf of my first Bookcase, which I have titled My Research. I want to move it to the first shelf (EDUC 586) of my third Bookcase, titled Education.

Clicking in the upper-right corner of the American Journal of Education in My Bookshelf opens the menu, with the choices to Move or Delete.

Clicking Move brings up an arrow, and this is where it gets tricky!  

Once you see the arrow on your journal, you'll navigate to where you want it to go. If you want it to go on one of your other bookcases, you will use the arrows to the far right of your bookcase name.

When you reach the bookcase where you want to put the journal, you will see gray bars with down arrows on each shelf. When you hover over the gray bar where you want the journal to go, you will see a tiny image of the journal appear.

Clicking on the gray bar with the image drops the journal title into the chosen slot.