You may be accustomed to thinking of a library as a place that keeps books and lends them out for free. While that's true of the J. Conrad Dunagan Library at UTPB, keeping and lending books is only a small piece of what the library does. University libraries are research libraries, and that makes them different than most of the libraries you've encountered at school or in your community.

For one thing, academic or research libraries exist to preserve knowledge and to make it accessible to the academic community. Because UTPB is a state institution, our library is also charged with making knowledge accessible to the citizens of Texas, even if they're not students. To this end, the UTPB Dunagan Library gives you access to print books and journals, ebooks, electronic journal databases, other databases, and a whole bunch of other stuff. You have access to the same expanse of research that students at UT Austin have!

For another thing, research libraries are hubs of all sorts of resources you can use to improve the quality of your academic work. Research and instructional librarians can help you find what you need, and they offer workshops throughout the semester. You can borrow a laptop or reserve an individual study space or a group study room. You can even use Texshare to use other libraries in Texas or Interlibrary Loan to get materials from other libraries for a minimal fee.

The work you'll do in this class this week is designed to help you:

Access to the wide range of academic resources available through the UTPB library.
Find high-quality information for your assignments and papers.
Evaluate the quality of the source material you have.

Reading Assignment

To prepare for class this week, you'll need to read and take notes over UTPB Dunagan Library Reference and Instruction Services Guide (all pages) before coming to class. Complete the reading assignment in Canvas before class for a participation grade.

You'll also need to watch the following short video and prepare at least one question to ask Mr. Mohammad Reza, one of our librarians, who will be giving a presentation in class.