Adjunct Professional Day
Charlie Evans
January 2009
 
 
What I'm supposed to do:  NOVA libraries provide a multitude of online resources in addition to what’s out there on the world-wide-web.  Find out how to access the library’s resources, and hear how Charlie and Diane incorporate online materials into their courses.

What I'll try to do:  Describe a few of the assignments that I have in both my campus and online courses that make use of library resources.

Where is the library? There is no longer the easy-to-find-and-use campus-library web page.  So, you must now use the college library page which is at www.nvcc.edu/library/ (but just try and find that link from the college home page at www.nvcc.edu/)


In all of my history courses
  • Wikipedia Analysis assignment
  • novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/campus/His135/Assignments/wikiPaper.html
  • Resource that I use: In this case I use the online Encyclopedia Britannica through VIVA.
  • Directions for the assignment:  You must compare the contents of the wiki article with the same article in Encyclopedia Britannica (See How to Access Britannica) or another reference source such as Encarta --There are many other acceptable encyclopedias and topical reference sources that you could also consult.  I would advise you to check with a campus reference librarian--You can do this comparison at any time with the three months of your project.

In my his 135 course (history of the contemporary world)
  • Current events paper
    • novaonline.nvcc.edu/eli/evans/HIS135/Assignments/CurrentEvents.html
    • Resource that I use:  There are a number of library databases, such as Proquest, that you can use to find relevant articles for this assignment.  As a starting point for research, check the Loudoun campus library.   For this assignment, some students have used Google Alerts to have articles that appear in online daily newspapers for a topic emailed to them.  Whenever that topic appears in the news it is mailed to your email.  Click on the News Alerts link at news.google.com.
    • Directions for the assignment: Students are required to follow the events in one country of the world throughout their enrollment in this course; it is easiest to do this "online"  instead of reading the daily newspaper, but you can certainly do that too.


Of course, students are able to do research for any other course assignments on the web using library resources.

 
 

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