Information Literacy Program at Decker Library

Suggested Workshop Schedule:

1. Welcome/kick-off activity - 15 minutes
2. You do research, let's talk about it! Where do you typically start? What tools do you use already? - 5 minutes
3. Slides: Introduction to research - 10 minutes
4. Group activity: In groups of 4, find primary resources online - 40 minutes (20 minutes to work, 20 minutes to report back to the class)
5. Final thoughts - 15 minutes

Optional workshop kick-off activity
Tools: The whiteboard.
Description: Write three sections on the whiteboard and have the students fill in each section.
Purpose: get the students thinking about their biases about Baltimore. Convey that by them living here, they are a source on Baltimore because they have experience their friends and family who might not live here don't have.

Slideshow
Suggested topics for the introduction to researching community history.

Learning Outcome:
By the end of this activity, students will become familiar with collecting institutions websites - or online only sites such as Internet Archive - and identify materials available online.

About this activity:
Since no two institutions are the same, it is highly recommended that the instructor of this workshop explore the websites they choose before writing out questions. It is also recommended that the questions are custom to the website, and that the overall learning outcome is achieved regardless of the institution or site.

This is an example of an activity worksheet for an online collecting institution like Internet Archive.
This is an example of a local collecting institution.