The ELM Learning Center is a collection of instructional materials on the Electronic Library for Minnesota (ELM) databases organized into courses. These materials are created by librarians in the Reference Outreach and Instruction unit of Minitex. The ELM Learning Center can help you get to know ELM and provides as much information as you'd like on using ELM more effectively.

This freshman course explores the scientific publication cycle, primary vs. secondary sources, and online and in-print bibliographic databases; how to search, find, evaluate, and cite information; indexing and abstracting; using special resources (e.g. patents) and “grey literature” (e.g. technical reports and conference proceedings); conducting Web searches; and constructing literature reviews.

The project asks students to explore the connection between racial discrimination and racial disparities in U.S. prison populations using credible sources of information including qualitative and statistical methods. The resource was developed by a faculty member and librarian in order to promote using library resources in the classroom. It was designed to encourage information literacy among students.  

This resource consists of six modules each leading a student through various "how-to" concepts to ensure effective use of library resources in all formats.

 This resource will provide college students with the skills necessary to find academic articles in support of a research writing assignment.This resource is written for a college level reader. The exercises are intended to be accomplished by using your college or university library website and the research resources on it.  While this resource can be accomplished independently, it has been written to serve as instruction within a research methods course and assumes that students have an actual research project to which they can apply these strategies.

Syllabus for Library Science 101, Honors Library Research Methods in Fall 2018 taught by Professor Cynthia Orozco.

A worksheet and short presentation in PDF format designed to introduce students to different strategies for oganizing research. 

This video provides a short introduction to scholarly articles and peer reviewed journals for students. It covers the distinguishing features of academic journals and resources for searching this literature. Although some of the information is specific to the Cornell University libraries, the information is generally applicable to any college or university research library.

This video provides a short introduction to the meaning of bibliographic citations for students. It covers how to distinguish references to books, articles in books, and articles in journals. Although produced by at Cornell University, the information is generally applicable to any college or university research library.

Searching library databases can be frustrating, since they don't understand human language as well as regular search engines. This tutorial will discuss how to build a search so you can find sources you need with less frustration.

This worksheet is designed to help teachers, educators and leaders use online and library search tools to locate rigorous and relevant research evidence on new and effective approaches to inform their practice.