Video Instruction Made to Order: Collaboration between Librarians and Faculty to Improve Student Theses

This paper traces the collaboration between the librarians in my special library and two academic departments in my university. Our initial discussions led to a deeper understanding of our mutual goals: helping students acquire the research and writing skills they would need to write their master\u27s theses, and their continued engagement in scholarship as future professionals, as consumers, and as producers of new knowledge in their field. The librarians offered a unique solution: a series of fifteen videos that showed, among other topics, how to search the academic databases across disciplines, how to target research and organize the results, and how to design a research and publishing agenda. The department chairs were essential to the success of this project, offering feedback during the creation process, both for language specific to their academic field and for content. Some of the videos have been used by other faculty as demonstrations of fundamental skill sets deemed necessary for all college students. All fifteen videos are available to the public through the university online catalog