Friday, May 26, 2006

Bibliographic Instruction for Graduate Students

I plan to hold a focus group with physics graduate students this summer to determine how I can be more helpful. If you have had experience with this kind of activity, I hope you will share it.

I have just read

Ackerson, Linda G. 1996 "Basing reference service on scientific communication: toward a more effective model for science graduate students". RQ 36(2): 248-260.

She suggests a model for helping graduate students with the literature review in preparation for writing the thesis.

1. search subject indexes
2. indentify review articles
3. search the references for "ancestors"
4. use citation searching to identify newer articles
5. current awareness

Has anyone used this model?

Cheers,
Pat