Wow! We’re officially six weeks into the fall semester. No doubt you’ve settled into a routine balancing home, work, and life as a student (whatever that looks like for you this term). Maybe you’ve visited the library once or twice, maybe it’s your new home-away-from-home… either way, I want to tell you about a free resource you might’ve overlooked. Did you know? The Madison College Libraries have over 150 research guides accessible to you as a student. That’s cool, right — but, what’s a research guide?

A research guide is an online tool created by Madison College librarians (you’ll sometimes hear us call them “LibGuides”). These guides are designed to help you find quality resources on a variety of subjects; vetted information curated for you the student, all in one place. I tell students whenever I can to bookmark these guides for your classes and revisit them throughout the semester. Research guides are meant to support you through papers, midterm projects, and onward to final exams.

Research guides include information for a number of courses taught at the College. If you’re in Written Communication or English 1 — we’ve got a guide for that! If you’re working toward your Associate Degree in Applied Science, taking nursing or human services classes– we’ve got a guide for that, too! We even have a guide for chemistry.

Chances are, if you’ve had a librarian talk to your class, you’ve seen firsthand how these guides are beneficial to you and your course work. Our Citation Guide is the perfect example. No matter what type of paper you might be writing the citation guide will help you navigate the process of documenting your works cited page and in-text quotations.

Furthermore, our Fake News guide will help you learn to evaluate online information so you can better sift the fact from fiction when consuming news on the web.

In addition to course-based guides, we also have a number of topic-specific guides covering variety of subject areas. For example: October is LGBTQ History Month. The LGBTQ Gender & Sexuality guide provides resources relating to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer issues both on-and off-campus, as well as featuring related books, films, and scholarly journals available from the libraries.

Another example: Hispanic Heritage Month is celebrated through October 15. The Hispanic American History guide provides a number of books, films, and web resources highlighting the contributions, culture, and rich history of Latino/a/x Americans.

We have some general purpose guides, too—guides that highlight each of our seven campus libraries, our superb student computer help, or the free testing resources available to you year-round. I could go on-and-on…

Checkout all this and more at http://libguides.madisoncollege.edu/library. To access the resources mentioned in this article, select the orange tab labeled “LibGuides” and browse from the link provided or drop-down list—you’ll be glad you did, we’re sure of it.