Diving Into Infographics: Research Skills for Early Undergraduates in Global Environmental Science

Abstract

The common experience for many early undergraduate students is to be taught the basics of their field via a survey course. Most often, their introduction to the library and librarians might be a one-hour instructional session on how to use the library catalog and find books and articles. Students’ understanding of research and the library remains unchanged from their prior knowledge: sub- ject information comes from teachers and textbooks, and libraries are places to study and check out books. This chapter describes a course that attempts to re-envision this relationship by giving students an initial experience that is a dive into the research process in a manageable format, with a semester-long in- troduction to their field, to research, and the role of the academic librarian as a research partner.