Tibbo

INLS 111: INFORMATION RESOURCES AND SERVICES I

School of Information and Library Science

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

TERM PROJECT GUIDELINES

Plan and conduct a practical reference project of your own choice, perhaps in relation to an organization that may use it. The organization does not have to be a library. The project should be of sufficient complexity to qualify as a professional project, but one manageable within the term. You are being given the assignment well in advance so that you can plan your time flexibly. It is always best to start on this work early. Everything takes longer than we anticipate and if you need to get materials through interlibrary loan you need to leave ample time. Also, your workload in ALL your classes will increase as the semester goes on, so plan accordingly. Please feel free to discuss your project with me at any time. I welcome and encourage drafts and early system prototypes.

Your pathfinder will be mounted on the WWW so learning how to do that and dealing with some multimedia will be part of the process. This is something every information professional today must know. You will learn in the lab how to create and design a web page. There is also a lot of support for creating web pages in the SILS computer lab.

Important Dates: Topic Due: September 4

Progress Update: October 2

Content Due: November 6

HTML Pathfinder & Presentation: December 11

Project requirements:

1. Consult the “Guidelines and Procedures for Compiling Pathfinders” handout for specific instructions.

2. You may want to search Library Literature for published examples of pathfinders and look at various library sites for sample electronic web pages. I will show you a few samples in class.

3. Once you have selected your topic, follow the guidelines on the pathfinder handout. Remember that while images and multimedia are interesting, exciting, and important in Web-based guides, intellectual content remains the primary focus. I am going to be concerned primarily with what you included in your pathfinder and why you selected these materials, and not so much with the visual elements of the pathfinder.

4. Your pathfinder will reflect a great deal of work and many, many selection choices that are not evident in your final product. So as to provide a better indication of your work on this project and your decision making criteria and strategies, please pass in justifications for each of your selections and a discussion of rejected items for each category of materials included in the pathfinder. These justifications and discussion should appear in a separate project report that stands alone from the pathfinder that a library client would not see. The idea is to indicate why you have chosen particular sources over others and to indicate the compilation process. Of course, you need not discuss all the items you rejected for a category if this is a very large number or if you included all you found due to a paucity of material. In most cases, however, you will want to discuss three to four significant sources that you rejected in favor of other items. This report will be a significant part of your final grade on the project. Thus you will pass in (and make available over the Web) your pathfinder. You will also pass in a print report documenting your work on the project.

5. IT IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE THAT ALL THE INFORMATION PROVIDED IN ANY OF THESE BIBLIOGRAPHIC PRODUCTS IS CORRECT. CHECK ALL REFERENCES AND LINKS INCLUDED; YOU DO NOT WANT TO MISLEAD CLIENTS! POINTS WILL BE DEDUCTED FOR ERRORS IN FORM AND CONTENT.