Library Instruction: A Core Service We Provide!

The University of Alberta Libraries is a strong supporter of teaching and information literacy. As a Teaching Library, we provide quality services and resources to facilitate the teaching, learning, and research needs of our user community.

Librarians (liaison or subject librarians) responsible for specific subject areas are heavily involved with instruction. A large part of their work involves teaching in many forms such as, library workshops, one-on-one consultations for research, and curriculum-based lectures.

Library sessions are typically one-shot workshops that cover a myriad of topics. Librarians teach everything from effectively searching databases for literature, citation manager tools, research metrics, research data management, and predatory publishing.

The fall term sees an influx of students, so naturally it is the library’s busiest month for instruction, as we reach out to our users and provide an orientation about our services and resources. While much of our instruction is considered “course based” (in fact, 80% of all library instruction are embedded within the curriculum), we do offer instructional sessions outside of regular courses.