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ELLM5170: Information Sources and Services: Pathfinders & Tutorial Resources

Pathfinder or Bibliography?

Bibliographies are lists of resources by a particular topic, author, or publisher.  They usually include annotations to provide additional information, and are often used by experienced researchers.

Pathfinders (aka Subject Guides), while similar to bibliographies, are designed for beginning researchers, and tend to guide users by following the flow of the research process.  They can be more selective than bibliographies, and may also include additional, non-print resources, such as websites, databases and magazines.

Tutorial Resources

There are a variety of programs available for creating tutorials or online instructional content for your students.  Some of these are freely available (often with limited functionality), while some are sold commercially.

The easiest, and most common form of tutorial is probably the 'screencast' (click here for more information), which allows users to follow your mouse clicks and actions as if looking at your Desktop with you.  More sophisticated software is also available for creating screencasts, as well as more complex tutorials (quizzes, buttons, animations, etc.).

The following programs and web2.0 sites are great resources for creating your own tutorials.

Sample Tutorials

Online tutorials can be found all over the Web, these days.  In both academic and corporate settings, they're being used to keep users informed and provide quick instruction, at the point-of-need.

Here are some links to tutorials from educational istitutions: