Information skills - helping your students get the most from their studies

Library staff, together with the Effective Learning Adviser and other colleagues, provide a range of services to help develop information and study skills which can be embedded in courses or offered as extra-curricular sessions.

Students with good information skills are more able to get the most from their learning and your teaching by knowing how to -

Identify the information they need for course work
Locate & access information efficiently
Evaluate the quality and appropriateness of information found e.g. for -
- relevancy
- authority
- credibility
- accuracy
- currency
Organise their information
Apply and communicate information effectively

All are relevant skills, not only for successful study but for a successful career and for lifelong learning. Their importance is recognised at international, national and HE sector level. Find out more about these key skills at SCONUL's Seven Pillars of Information Literacy.

The Library offers the following resources and services to help your students with information skills. We also have a Library Information Skills Group to develop our services in this area.

Library Induction - semester 1

We organise a programme of induction sessions for new first year undergraduate students in the first few weeks of Semester 1. This is done through liaison with School first year co-ordinators. These half-hour sessions give an overview of our services and resources, demonstrate the library website and how to use the online catalogue. To find out if a session has been scheduled for your first year students or to organise an induction session, contact Catherine Ure (Subject Librarian).

Course-based sessions

The Library's team of Subject Librarians can prepare and deliver tailor-made sessions on request from teaching staff. These can be on particular information skills topics for individual classes or subjects. Sessions can be fitted in to the students' timetable and ideally set up as an integral part of a course. Accompanying slides and learning materials can be made available in Vision (see our InVision page for more on how the Library can contribute to Vision courses). To request a session, teaching staff can contact their Subject Librarian to discuss requirements.

Workshops programme

The Workshop programme runs each Semester offering informal, extra-curricular sessions for students on a range of information and study skills topics. Some programmes may also include sessions specifically for staff.

Help & advice

You can direct students to our Ask services for help and advice on a one-to-one or small group basis.

Guides

To give a starting point to finding information you can direct students to the Library's range of guides and subject guides. These give advice on finding and using different types of resource. We also have a series of blog posts on information skills.

EndNote and EndNote Web

EndNote and EndNote Web are academic writing tools allowing you to collect, organise and format references and in-text citations. Find out more about the two products, who to contact for help and what training is available for students and staff.

Plagiarism

The Library offers workshops which can help students avoid plagiarism including sessions on citing and referencing, using EndnoteWeb and using Turnitin.

Information Skills Group

The Library has an Information Skills Group which works to develop the Library's information skills provision and to tie this in with the University's learning and teaching objectives. Our projects include the Library workshops programme. We use SCONUL's Seven Pillars Model of Information Literacy for UK Higher Education as our reference point. Academic staff can contact us with suggestions on how to improve the information skills development services we offer. Group members: Marion Kennedy, Sarah Kelly, Catherine Ure and Kirsty Thomson (Subject Librarians) Linda Kerr (Research Support Librarian), Isabelle Pottinger (Effective Learning Adviser) and Moira Stephen (IT trainer).