American Corner Innsbruck
eLibrary USA Workshop
Thursday, June 5, noon - 13.30
Hörsaal 3, Humanities Building, University of Innsbruck
In order to introduce more students of the University of Innsbruck to eLibrary USA, an online research database, the American Corner Innsbruck contacted Prof. Quendler of the American Studies Department. Prof. Quendler is in charge of this semester’s Academic Research Skills class and happily accepted our offer to do one session on online research, databases, and as a main focus eLibrary USA.
eLibrary USA is only accessible after having taking a workshop and signing up for it. It is then free of charge and password protected for all individuals that sign up.
We were kindly introduced by Prof. Quendler and then told the students of English, present at the course, a little bit about the American Corner, including the co-operation between the U.S. Embassy in Vienna and the American Studies Department at their University, as well as more detailed information on the core areas, and how that was of interest to them as students of English.
This was followed by an introduction to the literary research possibilities at the University, and some helpful websites, such as worldcat.org. This was followed by a 45 minute workshop on eLibrary USA. Some of the students had brought their laptops and were able to try along with the introduction, using a training password. They were introduced to the databases Academic One File, College Navigator, Black Studies in Video, and American English (as most of them are in the teacher training program) by tasks such as finding a specific article, narrowing down a search, looking for a specific author, and others. The 35 students present are at the beginning of their studies and have not done a lot of research before. Therefore, they were also given the e-mail address, Facebook page, and homepage of the American Corner Innsbruck, in case they need assistance in future.
To round it off, the students were given the task to find a specific article in a book and name the author. They then went on to see what else they could find.
We will gladly come back next semester, to do a similar workshop.
