Teaching Only the Essentials‐The Thirty‐Minute Stand

The one‐shot library lecture is a common approach to teaching library skills and one that is universally lamented by instruction librarians as insufficient. We all know there is far more students should know about library research than can be covered in one or two sessions. However, for many of us fifty minutes is about all we can persuade most teachers to share from their already over‐crowded syllabuses. One may well ask how a thirty‐minute stand may be adequate when even the traditional fifty‐minute stand has always seemed inadequate. But at the University of Wisconsin—Eau Claire, we have developed a model of instruction that works and has universal applications. Not only will the approach work at other institutions, it will work for most, if not all, disciplines. This approach consists of a thirty‐minute lecture followed by a twenty‐minute exercise.