The library faculty are here to help support teaching and learning at the City Colleges of Chicago. They can collaborate with instructors to enhance classroom learning by offering customized bibliographic and/or information literacy instruction tailored to course objectives and delivery formats.
Librarians can support faculty with the following:
Bibliographic Instruction
- Introduce students to the library catalog and discovery tools to find books, articles ebooks, and media for course assignments.
- Demonstrate how to select and use databases that match the discipline (e.g. nursing, business, psychology).
- Show students how to read and interpret citations so they can locate full-text sources.
- Teach effective search strategies (keywords vs subject headings, filters, etc.)
- Orient students to course reserves, textbooks and other required readings available through the library.
- Provide sessions on using citation tools (e..g citation managers, database citation features).
- Create course or assignment-specific research guides that point students directly to the strongest starting points for your class reducing frustration and confusion.
Information Literacy Instructional Support
- Collaborate with faculty to design research assignment that build critical thinking, inquiry and evaluation skills and not just "find three sources."
- In your classes, librarians can lead activities that help students evaluate sources for credibility, bias, authority and relevance including news, social media, websites and AI-generated content.
- Integrate academic integrity with skills-building, teaching students paraphrasing, summarizing and quoting in ways that validate student voices and reduce anxiety about "getting it wrong." Demonstrate how citation is part of a broader conversation about ethical information use.
- Guide students in narrowing or refining research questions and choosing appropriate types of sources for different information needs.
- Provide instruction on the responsible, ethical use of AI and other emerging technologies in their coursework
- Provide asynchronous learning objects (videos, tutorials, quizzes) that faculty can embed in Brightspace to reinforce information skills aligned with course learning outcomes.
- Librarians can offer co-curricular workshops or in-class sessions that connect research skills to issues affecting BIPOC and first-generation students, reinforcing relevance and engagement.
- Refer students to one-on-one consultations with librarians, where students receive nonjudgmental, strengths-based support that makes academic research feel approachable and achievable.
- Develop scaffolded information literacy instruction across a course or program aligned with learning outcomes.
For more details on what resources and supports are available to you, please click on the library for your home college.
