The Jack Tarver Library
Mercer University
Research Instruction

The Library  

The Jack Tarver Library, Mercer University, offers access to a wide range of collections and services to our patrons:

• Over 200,000 books
• Over 1,000 Periodicals (magazines, journals, and newspapers)
• Over 200,000 Government Documents
• Special Collections (Mercer University archives, Georgia Baptist archives)
• GALILEO (Georgia Library Learning Online) offers access to over 120 databases providing citations to periodical articles, reports, and full-text articles for a wide range of scholarly disciplines.

Research Instruction

The Jack Tarver Library offers many hands-on instructional options for a variety of topics across academic disciplines. Instruction sessions are designed and delivered in cooperation with First Year Seminar instructors to provide the best information fluency training for students. A research instruction session will facilitate student learning, offer students an opportunity to find and evaluate information for a current assignment, and provide the foundation for developing research skills that will last a lifetime.

Research Instruction will enable students to:

• Know what kind of information they need.
• Know where to search for the information.
• Critically evaluate that information.
• Formulate conclusions based on the information found and present those conclusions effectively.

First Year Seminar faculty's involvement with Research Instruction is strongly encouraged. The participation of teaching faculty in the instruction process is a key to its success. Instruction sessions are most successful when coordinated with a research driven assignment, and when the class instructor is directly involved in the session's planning and delivery.

Sessions can be tailored to the time available. Librarians are available for instruction sessions as follows:

• During regularly scheduled class times
• During extended class times
• During the fourth hour
• On evenings or weekends

The Archie Chappell Classroom

Research instruction sessions are primarily conducted at the Tarver Library in the Archie Chappell Classroom. If a session is desired at another location, librarians have equipment and materials available to provide on site instruction.

TheArchie Chappell classroom:

• 17 networked workstations with Microsoft Office Suite
• Space for group and individual work
• LCD projector
• Networked laser printer

Multiple research instruction sessions, addressing a range of information fluency topics, are encouraged for First Year Seminar classes:

• Tour of the Jack Tarver Library
• Introduction to GALILEO and the Online catalog
• Advanced GALILEO searching
• Advanced library catalog searching
• Effective World Wide Web searching
• Advanced searching with Google (TM)
• Evaluating information

For more information, or for scheduling a Research Instruction session:

Russell Palmer

• Instruction and Outreach Coordinator, Reference Librarian
• Telephone: 301-2251
• e-mail: palmer_rl@mercer.edu
• Fax: 301-2252