Pictured above: Dwight Hall on Mount Holyoke College’s campus, South Hadley, MA. Photo by Trinity Kendrick ‘21
By Zoë Farr ‘21
Managing Editor of Web
For college students, discovering how to navigate library resources effectively and efficiently is a crucial skill. Mount Holyoke College’s Library, Information and Technology Services has an abundance of research databases to utilize, but it can be difficult to know where to begin. LITS has an important resource available to any confused and overwhelmed Mount Holyoke student designed to make writing essays, working on a thesis or collecting data for research papers a little easier.
Research Services is a team of librarians dedicated to supporting students and faculty in their research endeavors. Run by Manager Beth Bidlack, the staff consists of Jim Burke, Caro Pinto, Julie Adamo and Mary Stettner. Although there have been research librarians working with Mount Holyoke for decades, the Research Services department is a newer development that formed around two years ago during an organizational restructuring of LITS.
Burke explained the organizational changes, saying, “The movement over the last couple of years was to specialize a bit more so we can focus on our particular areas.” Burke added, “Research Services wanted to really focus on helping students and helping faculty do research.”
According to the Research Services page on the Mount Holyoke library research guide, the goal of Research Services is to “support student and faculty research success by teaching how to effectively and ethically discover, evaluate, use, cite and create information in all its formats.” This can include gathering information and identifying resources for essays, papers, projects, theses and professors’ research.
Considering the 273 available databases for the Mount Holyoke community on the LITS website, the Research Services team knows it can be difficult terrain to navigate on your own. “Any one of [the databases] you can dig into and find amazing ways of accessing information from all over the place. And it’s pretty much impossible to get all of that out,” Burke said. “So we’re always trying to figure out: What is the most helpful thing for this particular student? Or what do we want all the students to know that they can do?”
Research Services has been integrated wholly into the Mount Holyoke experience. In first-year seminars, a librarian will visit to give instructions on the research process, allowing first-year students a glimpse into the LITS databases with support from research staff. Depending on a student’s major, they will have librarian-led instructional classes in their specific area of study to help with research papers and thesis work.
Even so, the Research Services team feels they are relatively unknown to the Mount Holyoke community, and they wish for students to understand and utilize the resource that is Research Services. “It takes a team of people to shepherd someone through their education,” Pinto said. “Your faculty members and your advisers are, obviously, a part of that team. We want to be part of that team too.”
During regular semesters at Mount Holyoke, Research Services was available to students at the Research Help Desk across from the Circulation Desk in the Williston Library. Usually manned by work-study students, the Research Help Desk provides one-on-one assistance to students looking for a basic level of library help. More in-depth research questions usually necessitate a one-on-one appointment with a trained research librarian.
Despite the current pandemic and the limited contact on campus, Research Services has found a way to continue aiding students remotely. “We’re working asynchronously these days as well as synchronously,” Bidlack said. “We rely heavily on consultations, one-on-one appointments [over Zoom]. We have a chat service that we also provide.” The Research Services’ chat line is open from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. EST Monday through Friday for students to drop by and ask questions, providing a low-stress and reliable line of communication for students to request assistance.
The Research Services staff heavily emphasized that the one-on-one appointments over Zoom are solely for the student’s benefit. “We really want students to understand that they have partners in order to be a sounding board, to cheer them on, to root for them with the research process,” Pinto said. “We’re not faculty; we’re not giving you a grade. So I always like to tell students that … it’s a no-judgment zone.” This sentiment was shared by Burke, who assured students that they could come unprepared, with no materials, and still have an effective meeting with Research Services.
While going remote had been an initial concern for the team, it seems to have served Research Services well during this period of quarantine and social distancing, especially for Bidlack. Bidlack began serving as the manager for Research Services in April 2020, beginning her time at Mount Holyoke during the COVID-19 pandemic. “I … met my colleagues via Zoom and have been working via Zoom my entire time at Mount Holyoke,” Bidlack said.
Bidlack hopes that Research Services can be helpful in the pursuit to stop the spread of misinformation by providing students with reliable and solid resources. “I think it’s important for students to see us as allies in that quest,” Bidlack said.
To learn more about Research Services, click here. If you have an assignment coming up that you need a little extra information on, make an appointment with the Research Services team by emailing researchservices-g@mtholyoke.edu. They’re waiting with a (imaginary) stack of books, ready to make your research process just that much easier.