Discover

We provide many ways to discover the vast resources available at the libraries. You can work with one of our knowledgeable librarians and reference the useful InfoGuides they have created. Or you can do it yourself by searching our catalog, reference materials, and databases.

Pepperdine Libraries took several steps to foster discovery this academic year. For instance, we moved our collection of theses and dissertations by Pepperdine graduate students to our digital publication platform Digital Commons, which is optimized for search engines. More than 460,000 papers were downloaded. View the research at digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu.

“When I discovered libraries, it was like having Christmas every day.”

— Jean Fritz, children’s literature writer

Encouraging Students to Be Critical Information Consumers

In a 2010 interview, the author Neil Gaiman said “Google can bring you back 100,000 answers; a librarian can bring you back the right one.” This oft-quoted statement speaks to the overload of knowledge available and how librarians have the information literacy skills needed to sift through it and help students find the materials they seek. At Pepperdine our librarians are fearless knowledge navigators. In a sea of fake news, they have the expertise to help students discover accurate and reliable information. During the 2019–2020 academic year, more than 4,000 students participated in information literacy instruction led by our knowledge navigation team.

Supporting Students During COVID-19

Pepperdine students took full advantage of our remote services as classes moved online in March. In one instance, a student collaborating with a professor needed a comprehensive literature review. One of our librarians referred her to a database that sorts articles based on how often they are cited. In another instance, a student researching the top foreign markets for sportswear was shown by a librarian how to obtain this data from a library database. Examples like these demonstrate our librarians’ resourcefulness and their willingness to help our students.

DISCOVER

Serving Our Faculty Colleagues

Our librarians are continually reaching out to faculty, alerting them to our resources and offering help and instruction—efforts that increased dramatically after classes went online in the spring. Here are some of the ways they supported our faculty colleagues:

Obtained materials for classes, including looking for additional ebooks on a subject or topic

Offered remote library research instruction and research help to students by visiting online classes via Zoom

Met with students for research consultation appointments via Zoom

Created and updated InfoGuides with electronic resources that are available remotely

Scheduled online meetings with faculty members to discuss how they could support their teaching with the above methods

Enhancing Discovery of Library Resources

Last summer we updated our catalog to WorldCat Discovery, which allows patrons to easily find resources available from Pepperdine Libraries and other libraries worldwide. An exciting feature of the new platform is a virtual browser that displays all of the libraries’ holdings arranged in shelf order. Additionally, we introduced a one-step search for the growing number of ebooks available to the Pepperdine community. Try it out at library. pepperdine.edu/collections/general.