Ready Set Go Workshops - Winter Term
Fri. Jan. 9, 2026
Learn more about the academic research process.
“Ready, Set, Go” is a series of practical workshops to help you with the academic research process. You will explore the library collections, learn the basics of citing and referencing your sources, discover new tools that will help you in your studies, and much more. All sessions are held online on Mondays, from 12:30 to 1:00 p.m. No previous knowledge is required, so register for one session or more and level up your research skills!
Winter Term Schedule
Crafting a Good Research Question (January 19)
You will learn how to brainstorm potential topics and research questions, identify different aspects of a topic for focus, and use information sources to get reliable background information.
Searching the Library: Basic (February 02)
You will learn how to do basic keyword searches for titles, authors, and topics, how to use search refinements and limiters to narrow the focus of your search, and how to find known titles in the library.
Searching the Library: Advanced (February 23)
You will learn how to create Boolean searches to improve your search results, how to use existing bibliographies to find other relevant sources, and how to search within specific journals for relevant articles.
Tracing the Scholarly Conversation (March 9)
You will learn how to use references and bibliographies to find previous sources, how to leverage the "cited by" feature of the databases to see how scholarly ideas have developed over time, and how to determine the importance of a source by tracing its relationship to others.
Citing and Referencing Your Sources (March 23)
You'll discover the reasons for citing and referencing in academic writing. You'll also learn how to identify your sources in-text using an appropriate citation style, and how to develop a complete list of references of all the sources you have cited.
Instructor
Librarian Ian Fraser is the Head of Reference and Instruction at the Library. He has professional expertise in critical information literacy, learning theory, academic integrity, and generative AI. He is teaching the first two workshops.