To Hostos Faculty:

We are pleased to offer customized bibliographic instruction workshops to teach your students some techniques for carrying out library research in your specific courses and to introduce the students to the most important or helpful types of resources for your assignment.

Library faculty understand that students sometimes have difficulty with even the most specific and helpful research projects or papers. It may be, too, that faculty are not aware of what new books, periodicals or other materials are available in the Hostos library. Perhaps a faculty member is unsure of the level of help to offer his or her students when devising an assignment that includes library research, or is unsure of whether a particular library assignment will work the way the faculty member would like.

All of the above scenarios are good reasons to contact Prof. Miriam Laskin, the Instructional Services Librarian, to make an appointment to bring a class for a bibliographic instruction session. These classes will be taught by one of the library faculty with expertise in the subject area, and sessions can be given during a time when the class normally meets. We can also provide these workshops in Spanish. But planning ahead is essential!

Note: Faculty are also invited to consult with their library liaison to revise or create low and high-stakes library-based assignments.

How to Arrange a Course-Related Library Workshop for Your Students:

If you would like to schedule a workshop for your students, or get some help in thinking through an upcoming library assignment, please call or email Prof. Laskin (ext. 4207 or mlaskin@hostos.cuny.edu). The Hostos Library website also has useful resources for faculty on how to develop effective library assignments, including Guidelines for Effective Library Assignments.

Faculty are encouraged to assign their students to sign up for a minimum of one of our three basic Open workshops (InfoLit101, Keys to Database Searching, Surf Smart I) early in the semester in order to be better prepared for the course-related workshop. We provide each student in our Open Workshops with a signed Attendance Form. The library will begin offering course-related workshops 3 - 4 weeks into the semester, after your students have had the opportunity to take at least one of our basic workshops.

1. Faculty must accompany their classes and stay through the workshop session.
2. Faculty should contact Prof. Laskin at least two weeks before they want to hold the course-related instruction so that scheduling will not be a problem. We will need to assure that the library faculty best suited to give that particular class will be available and have the time to prepare the materials and lesson plan for the session.
3. The workshop will be designed to address a specific library assignment, so the faculty requesting the workshop must discuss the assignment beforehand with the library faculty member who is going to teach the workshop.
Poll your students before you schedule a workshop: If the majority of students in your class are NOT already familiar with basics of using the library databases and catalogs, please first assign the students to sign up for one of the three Open Sign-Up Workshops before the date of the course-related workshop. We teach at least four- five different Open Workshops and times each week, so students should not have any difficulty in attending at least one of them.