Post Graduate students and Info-Literacy

For the last few months I've now only had responsibility for PostGrad students - the little Undergraduates are being supported by our fabulous new Subject Librarian up at  the main university site - I do miss them though - but they do very much still find their way down to our Library (often in large migratory flocks).

Photo by PicturePerfectPose: Flickr

Anyway, this coming academic year is going to be the first time in my Library career (13 years for you nosey readers) that I haven't had to prepare for UG inductions or UG information literacy sessions.  Feels kinda weird. 

It's not that I don't need to prepare for the Post Grads, in fact this year I'll be doing more for them than the last two years I've been in this post.  But their information literacy needs are very different.  Of course they still need all the same things that UGs need, they need to know how to search for an article, they need guidance to make it beyond a Google search etc and they definitely need training on all those databases they're supposed to use - even more so perhaps than the UGs.

The main difference I'm finding is to do with the fact that the majority of PGs are only here for a year (9 months really).  There's none of this accumulative info lit teaching - e.g. in the first year we'll focus on keyword searching, in the second year we'll step it up a gear and in the third year we'll do all out research methods.  All this has to fit in the 9 months that they are here being taught. 

In previous jobs my main focus was always the UG population, the PGs got a few sessions but the majority of my time was spent supporting the UG courses.  But now I can actually turn my attention to the PGs and really think how I can squeeze in as much support for them as possible.  I think I do pretty well already, one MSc student came up to me on my way to Waitrose at lunch time (other supermarkets are available) and said "Are you Carolyn?  You're famous with us students".  So that was kind of nice, albeit a bit annoying as it was raining and I didn't have an umbrella.

I have lots of training planned for the new intake in September/October.  But am worried I might over stretch myself.  1200 students (not to mention the 100 planned intake for MBA and 100 PhDs) and one little old me.  Plus on top of that I have all my  electronic resource managing to do.... but it's an exciting time... I'm looking forward to it.

Bring it on!