ZSR Did You Know?

UPDATED TO ADD: For parents and families of incoming first year students (P’22): the Orientation (aka New Deac Week) schedule is LIVE! Visit http://guidebook.com/app/newdeac17/guide/newdeacorientation18/ to download the WFU Orientation Programs guide (New Deac Orientation 2018). You will find the most up-to-date information, including schedules, maps, and much more. You may also access the details of the schedule via website on your laptop, desktop, tablet or phone by going to the following website: https://guidebook.com/guide/136097/. Note that because we are trying to be more sustainable, we are not printing out paper copies of the Orientation brochure, so please access the Guidebook app or the online PDF

I am traveling today and tomorrow for a New Student Reception, so this is a pre-post.

Longtime Daily Deacers know that I am a big fan of the Z. Smith Reynolds Library. Today I want to mention a couple of things that may be of particular help to our incoming P’22 families, or to our older families in case their Deacs are not aware.

Did you know that the ZSR offers free research support? Your Deacs can schedule a research session with a librarian to help find sources for papers and projects. There are subject specialists – librarians who have expertise in particular subjects. If your Deac has already declared their major and they don’t know the librarian assigned to their major, they need to get on that 🙂

There are also free research workshops for your Deacs. I am going to tell you the secret to happy paper-writing: it’s called Zotero. Zotero is a research program that helps students keep track of citations, and even automatically formats in-text citations and the reference section of your paper. So you don’t have to type in your references and worry about proper APA or other formatting – you just hit a button and it writes itself. Deac families, if you ever had to struggle to get your bibliographies done when you were in college, you know it could be a royal pain. I am here to tell you Zotero is a godsend. Your Deacs should know about it and use it.

Finally, there is a great class called LIB 100 (Academic Research and Information Issues).  It is a 1.5 credit class and can teach your Deacs the following:

This 1.5-semester hour course provides a basic understanding of concepts in the research process, enabling students to identify appropriate strategies for filling the information need. The course explores the broad array of information sources in various formats and disciplines, and emphasizes the organization, efficient retrieval, and critical evaluation of electronic and print information. Along the way, students become familiar with the ZSR Library and the vast array of resources available to the through the Library.

There is abundant (free) help all over the place – at the ZSR, as well as throughout other academic and administrative offices. My experience tells me that the Deacs who take advantage of these kinds of resources have a leg up on those who don’t. So encourage your Deacs to use every resource they can!