Abstract:

We will present newly established courses at Linköping University in Sweden, where academic librarians teach doctoral students information literacy and other skills needed during thesis work.

Doctoral students are an academic group that has often been overlooked in the past regarding support from the library. While considerable time has been devoted to teaching undergraduate students information literacy, and senior researchers have received customised research support, doctoral students have frequently fallen through the cracks.

According to the Swedish Higher Education Act undergraduate students should develop the ability to make independent and critical assessments, to independently distinguish, formulate and solve problems, to seek and evaluate knowledge at a scientific level and be able to follow the development of knowledge in their fields, all of which corresponds to several information literacy concepts. Further on the act says that education at advanced level and postgraduate level must build on and deepen this knowledge and these skills and abilities.

Based on these circumstances and following a reorganisation a few years ago, Linköping University Library decided to enhance our research support to meet doctoral students´ needs to a larger extent as well.

Currently, our library offers individual search support and introductory workshops on reference management systems, in addition to an introductory lecture titled “New PhD Student” and a web-based doctoral course, “Library Course for Doctoral Students”, comprising eight modules on various topics related to the research process. These modules can be completed with assignments for credit, but attendance without enrolling in the full course is also an option. Moreover, the library provides a credit-bearing, on-site course, “Literature searching and reviewing”, for one of the university’s engineering institutions and has recently been invited to hold lectures in a course at another engineering institution.

Within the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences library staff plays an integral part in two mandatory doctoral courses, “Scientific communication and information retrieval” and “Scientific methodology”. The library also offers lectures and workshops for doctoral groups upon request. Lastly, the library delivers a lecture known as “Soon PhD” which provides essential information that doctoral students need to acquire during the thesis publication process and in preparation for their PhD defence.

We would like to share our experiences, with focus on the credit-bearing course “Literature searching and reviewing” and the web-based course “Library Course for Doctoral Students” and discuss further improvement of our courses.

Keywords:

Information literacy, PhD-courses, Teaching librarians.