Western Libraries Curriculum for You

Whose voices matter when it comes to researchers or even being a researcher? How do we think about knowledge and learning?

Now more than ever, Western Libraries at the Teaching and Learning Team wants to unpack what users may be coming to use with from their epistemology (or theory of knowledge), asking:

• How does your community define knowledge?
• What do you know to be true? How did you come to know it?
• What counts as evidence for your beliefs?
• Who is allowed to be knowledgeable? How does someone become an expert?

Our libraries and librarians work to ensure that they can “teach students to value who they are and what they know, while questioning the forces that shape their learning.”

Using this belief, Western Libraries curriculum has redesigned its learning outcomes to center themes of Knowledge Justice, whereby the end of your degree, you should be capable of the following abilities:

1. Respect others by considering the value and limitations of all forms of knowledge (Knowledge Justice)
2. Reflect on the scope of their own knowledge and investigate perspectives that can broaden that scope (Critical Reflection)
3. Search for new and diverse knowledge in inclusive and ethical ways (Searching)
4. Critically evaluate sources of knowledge before using them (Identifying and Evaluating Sources)
5. Make culturally respectful choices about their use of others’ knowledge (Responsible Use of Knowledge)
6. Acknowledge their power to responsibly influence others when sharing ideas (Creation and Dissemination of Knowledge)

What You Will Find in this Book

Content in the following tutorials for library research skills can be utilized at any point in your academic career, but many of them fall into a natural progression listed below:

• Knowledge Justice and Critical Reflection
  • Every single chapter!
• Searching
  • Developing Your Research Question
  • Concept Mapping
  • Subject Headings and Search Terms
  • Databases and Sources for your Search
  • Boolean Operators
  • Google and Google Scholar
  • Refining and Revising Your Search with Fields
  • Organizing Your Search Process
• Identifying and Evaluating Sources
  • The Peer Review
  • Frameworks for Critically Evaluating Sources
  • Mis/Dis/Mal-information
  • Generative Artificial Intelligence
• Responsible Use of Knowledge
  • Plagiarism
  • Paraphrasing
  • Annotated Bibliographies
  • Organizing Your Search Process (Citation Management Software)
• Creation and Dissemination of Knowledge
  • Mis/Dis/Mal-information
  • Literature and Systematic Reviews
  • Introduction to Call Numbers

Check out our guide in the next chapter for important concepts to follow as you engage with your research journey!