What is a pathfinder and why might it be useful?
SLIS faculty member Lokman Meho assigned pathfinders for projects in his Fall 2005 L524: Information Sources and Services class. L524 is a required foundation course for the Master of Library Science degree program. He talked about this class assignment:
"Pathfinders are research guides that can be useful to students, the general public, faculty members, and anyone interested in the topics. Each pathfinder has its own goals, objectives, and type of audience that it is directed towards. They can be extremely useful, but only if they are made visible, and if library users are educated about them. Several of the pathfinders created for this semester's class will be published in refereed journals. This gives students an opportunity to become more marketable in their career areas."
The assignment description tells more about pathfinders:
"A pathfinder is a bibliographic guide that introduces clients to the literature of a specific subject area or topic. Its arrangement and content reflect the most common questions in a literature search and the beginning stages of a research project. A pathfinder is not an exhaustive annotated bibliography. Instead, it provides a carefully selected list of various types of important resources, both reference and non-reference. Pathfinders are typically short in length, depending on the intended audience and the resources available."
You can view the L524 Student Pathfinders from Dr. Meho's Fall 2005 class. They include a variety of topics from the Harlem Renaissance to Medieval Arthurian Romances. They include topics such as Women Composers; Immigration Records; Alfred Hitchcock; Marc Chagall; and the History and Culture of Tea. Pathfinders are becoming more common on library websites as a means to help patrons explore topics. A few other topics covered by this class include: Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma; Health Benefits of Olive Oil; History of Islam; and Influenza 1918. The students were all creative and worked to prepare interesting reference tools for people to use. These class assignments can become part of their portfolios as they enter the job market.
Posted December 13, 2005