College and Research Libraries


R. R. RONKIN 

A Self-Guided Library Tour for the 
Biosciences 

Replacement of a conventional, staff-guided library tour for graduate 
students in the biosciences by a self-guided tour seems to have en-
couraged individual student effort, has allowed for development of 
individual interests during the tour, and has greatly reduced the time 
required for staff participation. Self-guided tours are easily developed 
and installed and merit general consideration. 

THE PRIMARY LITERATURE of the bio-
sciences, with a hard core of thirty-five 
hundred extant journal titles, 1 is enor-
mous. Beginning graduate students need 
to be acquainted with its fundamental 
nature, with its diversity and structural 
complexity, and with efficient methods 
for its use. Each September, in an in-
tensive study program of four weeks, 
new biology graduate students at the 
University of Delaware are made aware 
of the important journals in subdisci-
plines of their greatest interest, learn 
to recognize and analyze the parts of a 
research paper, become familiar with 
the most important bibliographic aids, 
and embark on projects designed to de-
velop understanding in specific areas of 
scientific investigation. These projects 
involve critical reading, the writing of 
abstracts, and exhaustive literature 
searches. For years these exercises began 
with a tour of the university library so 
that students would know the location 
of available services. Tours involved 
groups of eight to twelve students, re-

1 Raymund L. Zwemer, in Fred S. Howard ( ed.) 
Biological Sciences Serial Publications, a World List 
1950-1954 (Philadelphia: Biological Abstracts, 1955), 

' p. v. 

Dr. Rankin is with the Office of I nterna-
tional Science Activities in the National Sci-
ence Foundation. He acknowledges the en-
couragement of Clifton F. Giles, ]r., in the 
preparation of this paper. 

quired about an hour, and were con-
ducted by the professional staff of the 
library. Inadequacies of the tour became 
evident when responses were analyzed 
to a questionnaire completed by the stu-
dents at the end of the academic year in 
which the tour had been the first exercise. 
These shortcomings included ( 1) em-
phasis on services (microfilm: Readers' 
Guide to Periodical Literature) which 
are of comparatively little use to scholars 
in biology; ( 2) failure to draw attention 
to certain especially useful items (the 
Xerox machine, the journals shelved with 
U.S. government documents); ( 3) in-
ability of students at the rear of the 
group to see and hear; ( 4) lack of op-
portunity to handle the items shown and 
to examine them closely, thus failing to 
satisfy curiosity at the moment of its 
provocation by the guide; and ( 5) lack 
of opportunity to notice and explore 
items of special interest to individual 
students. Furthermore, planning and 
guiding the tour required extra time of 
the library staff, often in the evening. 

To improve the library orientation at 
Delaware it was first assumed that a 
tour is desirable and that it is best 
planned by a member of the faculty 
skilled in graduate pedagogy and fa-
miliar with the varied needs of em-
bryonic scholars in his field. It also 
seemed clear that the diversity of inter-

/ 217 



218 I College & Research Libraries • May, 1967 

ests at this level of training requires that 
students tour as individuals and not in 
a group. Finally, it was apparent that 
a live guide often prevents a direct con-
frontation of the student with the li-
brary materials: during the tour the stu-
dent could neither handle the materials 
himself nor seek answers prompted by 
his emerging special interests. For these 
reasons an individual, self-guided tour 
was designed and installed. 

The first draft of instructions for the 
tour was written by the instructor in his 
office in one sitting. Having prepared the 
draft, the instructor toured with it in 
hand, correcting errors and clarifying 
ambiguities as he walked ( 45 minutes). 
A member of the library's reference staff 
kindly provided final review ( 15 min-
utes), after which mimeograph stencils 
were cut and copies were produced for 
distribution to students. 

Beginning at the main entrance, the 
tour route included most of the public 
areas of the building; the final sentence 
of the instructions propelled the student 
through the exit turnstile and out. The 
instructions followed the detailed, pedan-
tic style of the European tourist guide-
books. While the student was required 
to identify seventy-eight features and 
services (including only seven specific 
publications), he was also encouraged 
to browse somewhat during the tour. The 
following materials were included as 
supplements: ( 1 ) a plan of the main 
floor with arrows showing the first part 
of the route; ( 2) some easy retrieval 
problems, so worded that the usefulness 
of this newly acquired skill would be 
obvious to the student (one-half page); 
( 3) a statistical summary of library user 
services and a brief description of the 
interlibrary loan service, the processes 
of acquisition and cataloging, and the 
annual budget (all on one page); and 
( 4) an analysis of the biosciences por-
tion of Class Q of the Libra,ry of Con-
gress classification system (one page). 
The latter feature was necessary because 

most of the students were familiar only 
with the Dewey system, from their un-
dergraduate experience at other institu-
tions, and because the library's posted 
classification schedules were insufficient-
ly detailed for the purpose. 

During the first year of student use it ' 
was observed that the center of pur-
poseful effort shifted somewhat from the 
staff toward the individual student, 
where it belongs. The new tour evidently ~ 
required about twice as much time as 
the old one. It could be scheduled en- ·i 
tirely at the convenience of the student, 
who might elect to divide the tour into 
two or more sessions. There were indi-
cations that the students now require 
much less help than in former years in ~ 
locating services at the time of actual use 
and that many students remember long-
er the items they saw on the tour. Once 
written, the instructions for the tour 
were likely to require little or no re-
vision for at least several years . 

There seem to be good reasons for de-
signing self-guiding tours for graduate 
students in the biosciences and perhaps 
in other scholarly disciplines, and even ' 
for certain groups of undergraduates, 
especially when the instructions are writ-
ten by faculty members who teach at 
these levels. Christensen and Palmer2 ~ 
have remarked: "Instructors should be 
aware of a strange phenomenon where-
by the student may consider acquisition 
of a learning program nearly equivalent 
to mastery of the subject." In concur-
ring, the experience at Delaware sug-
gests that mimeographed instructions for 
tours not be made freely available at the 
libr.ary service desk, but used instead as 
specific assignments by course instruc-
tors, who subsequently test the students 
for understanding of their subject gained 
through effective use of the acquired , 
bibliographic skills. • • 

2 Halvor N. Christensen and Graham A. Palmer, 
Enzyme Kinetics, a L earning Program for Students 
of the Biological and Medical Sciences (Philadelphia 
and London: W. B. Saunders, 1967), p. iv. 

•