A new pilot program offered by a group of McMaster University librarians is providing undergraduate students with the opportunity to access drop-in research support.
Erin Stienstra, teaching and learning librarian (social sciences and humanities), Carly McLeod, teaching and learning librarian (engineering), and Ines Perkovic, business librarian, are leading the initiative to help ensure student success.
McMaster undergraduate students are invited to visit the informal drop-in hour every Thursday from 2-3 p.m. at the Wong e-Classroom in room L107 located on the main floor of Mills Memorial Library. The program will run weekly until April 20, 2023.
“The concept for this pilot was developed after a professor asked if I would consider offering drop-in hour sessions for a class that I was teaching in the fall of 2022,” said Stienstra. “The sessions turned out to be very successful, so I wanted to offer the same opportunity more broadly.”
Students from all faculties are welcome to attend the weekly drop-in hour on their own or with classmates to ask research-related questions or to request support for issues they might be facing regarding their research projects, says McLeod.
“We are available to offer help at any point in the research process, from searching databases to organizing citations,” said McLeod. “In the case that we can’t answer a student’s question, we can point them in the right direction.”
Perkovic says that she hopes the program will enhance the visibility of research support to commerce students, whose library resources have been temporarily relocated while a new Innis Library is being built.
“I’ve found there are many commerce students who don’t realize that we continue to provide research support, temporarily, from Mills library,” said Perkovic. “I hope that this program will help extend that awareness to more of our students.”
McMaster students who are unavailable during the weekly drop-in hour can request one-on-one research support from a librarian by filling out the research consultation request form.
For more information on research support for McMaster students, visit the library's research help webpage.
