Chalmers Library offers three different courses; a Library introduction, an Undergraduate instruction and a Graduate course. The goal is to provide the students with skills they can use throughout their studies, research and entire life.
”The methods you have shown in your course Information Literacy are very valuable, especially to new PhD-students. For the first time and thanks to you I found the feature to get a suggestion of which journals to send our manuscripts to. I appreciate this information.”
PhD-student
The avalanche of information continues to grow. Today researchers are publishing more than ever, contributing to an almost exponential growth of information. Libraries have always helped its users to navigate vast collections of information – educating them to become confident in finding and assessing information resources.
Today we focus on promoting Information literacy: a set of skills that enables researchers and students to recognize when information is needed and grow the ability to find, evaluate and use scholarly information. Our classes reach more than 1 500 individuals at Chalmers annually.
The Library introduction is an introduction to the information resources available for students, staff and faculty associated with Chalmers. During the course students are taught how to create a search query, define a subject and identify and combine search terms. They learn how to perform a search, evaluate relevant results, cite references and use library resources for writing and citing.
In the Undergraduate instruction students learn to search, use and evaluate scholarly information. After the course students are able to choose and evaluate appropriate sources for a student thesis. They can explain the concepts of scholarly communication, the meaning of academic honesty and copyright. The students learn to interpret and write references and how to use a reference management tool.
The Graduate course is aimed towards new PhD students. Topics covered in the course include scholarly communication, Open Access, search strategy, current awareness, bibliometrics, visualizations, patents and reference management.
Upon completing the course students are able to understand scholarly communication and how to use patents as an information source. They can efficiently retrieve information from commercial and free databases relevant to their field. The students know how to grasp the importance of bibliometrics and its relevance in their field of study. The course provides skills useful in a researcher career.
We offer two information literacy courses beside the Library Introduction; one for undergraduates and one for graduate students.
”The course was very useful. I think it should be one of the first courses a PhD student should register and partly it should be even compulsory before writing master’s thesis.”
Onur, PhD-student
