Engineering Students Training for Specialized Information and Documentation Mastery—an Account of User Education at Cranfield Institute of Technology

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper provides a summary of how instruction and training in the use of library information resources is currently presented to engineering students at Cranfield Institute of Technology. The Cranfield campus of the Institute has an almost entirely postgraduate community, which means that the library aims to provide a personalized information service to meet the highly specialized needs of its users. Instruction is carried out both on a group basis and during one-to-one discussions with students, especially as they begin to prepare literature searches for their research projects. Emphasis is placed on conveying the importance of requesting more information about specialist sources, when this is actually required. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on how it is envisaged user instruction will evolve at Cranfield. This is likely to lead to the development of an information counselling and advisory role for library staff, targeted at specific groups throughout the duration of their resear...