Teaching Matters: Increasing Library Visibility through Integrated Classroom Instruction

Abstract

This paper addresses the need for academic librarians to teach and reach out to undergraduate engineering students in their own space — engineering classrooms. The Science & Engineering Library team at the University of British Columbia (UBC) believes that teaching students the importance and relevance of using library resources in their first and second years of study will better prepare students to complete their assignments. Each year the Science & Engineering Library team presents to 850 first and second year students per term. In an investigation of our efforts, 20 more advanced, third and fourth year undergraduate engineering students were asked what informational tools and sources they used for their assignment in APSC 263 - Technology and Development: The Global Engineer. The results showed that 90% of the students in the study planned to use UBC library resources for their assignments. This positive result supports our belief that our commitment to providing extensive library instruction is creating a greater awareness of engineering librarians and the resources the library has to offer.