WSU Library Instruction
Creating Effective Library Assignments
General Principles and Guidelines:
- Identify a purpose or rationale for the assignment that is clearly communicated to the students
- Make sure the assignment is closely tied to the course content to provide relevance
- Check with the WSU Libraries' Subject
Area Resources and Subject
Area Guides to learn of relevant resources for your assignment
- Work through the assignment yourself
- Be sure that each resource listed on your assignment has the complete name of the item, accurate usage of terminology is a must
- Create assignments so that a large number of students are not trying to get access to a very small number of resources
Contact a Subject Area Specialist (Librarian) for help with the following:
- Learn about available resources and potential resources limitations
- To put heavily used materials on reserve
- To schedule a course-integrated instruction session
- To put a paper copy of your assignment at the reference desk
- To encourage your students to stop by the Reference & Information Desk to get help if they need assistance
Suggestions for library based assignments (beyond the traditional research paper):
Using components of the course content as a topic:
- Create an annotated bibliography
- Prepare a (fictitious) interview with a relevant person
- Compare and contrast primary and secondary sources
- Compare and contrast popular versus scholarly sources
- Compare and contrast publications information) over time
- Compare and contrast publications (information) reflecting conservative and liberal political persuasions
- Compare and contrast publications (information) across disciplines
- Compare and contrast publications (information) across geographic regions
- Compare and contrast publications (information) among the various types of reference resources
- Compare and contrast publications (information) available from article indexes with information available on the open Internet
- Compare and contrast key serial (journal or periodical) publications
