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Faculty Resources

Edit Guide Title: Bloomington Library

The Library is dedicated to supporting faculty's classroom assignments, professional development, and personal research. This guide provides information on the kind of skills we teach, ways the Library can support you in the classroom, faculty training, resources for professional development, and how the Library can help you in your own research.

Faculty Support

Librarians provide instruction on the skills and resources students need to find quality sources in today's information-rich world.  The length and content of instructional sessions is tailored to your needs and topics may include:

  • physical library resources and services
  • online search techniques (keywords, boolean terms, truncation, phrasing, subject terms)
  • finding sources
  • resources for citing sources
  • how to determine if a source is trustworthy
  • and more! Talk to us about what your students need.

Instruction may consist of presentation, group discussion, team teaching, and/or practice exercises. We can even work with you to provide additional support to classes that require intensive subject-specific research.

We invite you to have your instruction take place in the Library Presentation Room so that students may become familiar with the Library and its location.

We can also schedule a Library Lab Session if your course includes assignments where students research topics or cite sources during class time. These sessions would allow librarians to provide point-of-need assistance and easy access to Library resources.

To schedule a Instruction or Lab Session for your class, please fill out a request form.

Tired of students not having their textbooks at the beginning of the semester? Want to supplement your course with DVDs or articles that you want students to be able to access outside of class?

Faculty may request that materials (owned by the Library or faculty themselves) be kept on the reserves shelf for in-Library use.

To view course reserve policies, the request form, and a list of all materials on reserve or request a reserve, please visit Course Reserves site.

At Ivy Tech we are focused on student success and retention. One way the library assists faculty in this effort is by providing assignment support. It’s as easy as communicating with a librarian - and it’s especially important when assignments link directly to library resources. To be most helpful, library staff need to know

  • what resources students are asked to use
  • when they need them
  • and for what specific purposes.

Faculty can send copies of assignments to the Library Director, Nicole Treesh or to their school liaison librarian. This simple step will avoid broken links to resources, titles that have changed, paywalls, and outdated materials.

Librarians will even curate resources to support upcoming assignments, from the most relevant databases and journals to open educational resources. Many of our Library Guides contain such resource links. The librarians create and maintain these guides for you - just let us know what your class needs.

Students ask the library staff for help in any case, so let’s work together to ensure successful learning and teaching.

The library has developed a series of help guides for research-related topics such as EBSCOhost, citing sources, and evaluating websites.

Librarians can cover a lot of information during instruction, and these guides provide additional information about the various resources available to students.

Librarians can create online guides to useful resources on the topics your students are researching. Librarians have already created LibGuides for various courses and subjects.

To request a LibGuide, contact your school liaison librarian.

The librarians always welcome feedback from faculty and opportunities to collaborate with them.

Faculty should feel free to come to us with suggestions or ideas for classroom materials that are related to the library.  Some examples of possible items are:

Library staff will meet with you for one-on-one training on a variety of topics that will help you to assist students as well as in your own research.

Training topics can include:

  • Constructing Search Terms
    Tips and tricks for finding what you need that we don't have time to cover in a class presentation.
     
  • Databases
    The Library subscribes to hundreds of databases covering a wide variety of topics and formats. Librarians can familiarize you with the databases appropriate for your field or research project.
     
  • NoodleTools
    NoodleTools is software that helps students cite sources in proper MLA, APA, and Chicago formats. It also allows instructors to view and comment on students' citations in NoodleTools.

Professional Development

The Library's Professional Development Collection contains hundreds of books on topics important to you: androgogy, classroom management, online learning, curriculum development, and more.

Useful Links

Books

Millennials is a generation of people born during the 1980s and early 1990s. The name is based on Generation X, the generation that preceded them. Members of Generation Y are often referred to as “echo boomers” because they are the children of parents born during the baby boom (the “baby boomers”). Because children born during this time period have had constant access to technology (computers, cell phones) in their youth, they have required many employers to update their hiring strategy in order to incorporate updated forms of technology. Also called millennials, echo boomers, internet generation, iGen, net generation
(From http://www.businessdictionary.com/).

Books and eBooks

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a perspective used to evaluate and design instructional materials. It is best practices drawn from those already used by teachers. UDL is based on the idea of universal access in architecture: just as a ramp accommodates baby strollers and bicyclists as well as people in wheelchairs, so using captioned audio clips helps all students as well as hearing-impaired students. UDL uses technology as required to meet its goals; it is not a technological solution.

The resources below will help you evaluate your instructional materials and activities from the perspective of UDL principles. 

Online Resources

Welcome, North Central Faculty

Contact us: The South Bend-Elkhart campus libraries and the South Bend-Elkhart campus library website offer faculty resources and services that help students succeed.  Find out how to request a library instruction session, how to use library resources (both print and online), and submit suggestions for new materials for the library.   

We're here to help. Feel free to stop by, e-mail, or call.

Page Cotton
Librarian - Elkhart
574-830-0375 x4407
dcotton@ivytech.edu
John Fribley
Library Director
574-289-001 x5341
jfribley@ivytech.edu
M. Elizabeth Van Jacob
Librarian - South Bend
574-289-7001 x1125
mvanjacob@ivytech.edu