On Saturday, October 14, 2023, the Information Literacy Orientation activity for volunteers at the Library of the Faculty of Biology UGM was conducted. This activity is held regularly every year with the aim of providing orientation for new volunteers on how to utilize the available literacy resources at the UGM Library and an introduction to the Mendeley Citation Management application. The event took place in the Computer Room of the Library of the Faculty of Biology UGM from 08:00 to 15:00,featuring Dr. Purwani Istiana, SIP., MA, an expert librarian from the Library of the Faculty of Geography UGM as a speaker, and was attended by all new and existing volunteers, as well as staff from the Library of the Faculty of Biology UGM.
The event was officially opened by Acting Head of the Library, Drs. Ign Sudaryadi, M.Kes, in his speech, he conveyed that being a volunteer librarian for biology is a good start in developing knowledge, especially in a field that undergoes constant changes, by strengthening information literacy in their field of interest. Volunteer students are expected to serve as a bridge for the academic community to utilize the available information resources in both the UGM library and the National Library.
In the first session, Dr. Nina explained the utilization of information sources accessible to the UGM academic community through the official UGM website, leading to the collections available in the Library, as well as how to effectively find information. Dr. Nina presented Several search strategies such as using Boolean operators (AND, OR, NOT), search limitations, such as access rights, subjects, keywords, and publication years to all participants. They practiced firsthand how to efficiently and effectively obtain information through the lib.ugm.ac.id website by introducing integrated catalogs through OPAC for access to printed books. They were also taught how to search for information in UGM-subscribed online journals. UGM has 126 journals indexed on the Garuda portal, including 2 scientific journals from the Faculty of Biology: BIB and JTBB. After learning how to search journals, participants were introduced to accessing the Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) repository service. Following this, participants were given hands-on practice in searching UGM-subscribed online information sources through the ScienceDirect, ProQuest, SCOPUS databases, among others, until they could find online reference sources that matched the subject or keywords required for citation. They were then introduced to databases not subscribed by UGM that can be accessed through Google Scholar by typing in desired keywords, and for more focused search results, they were advised to use quotation marks around the desired title or keywords. Additionally, they conducted searches through search engines like Dimensions, Portal Garuda, and Semantic Scholar.
In the second session, volunteer students were introduced to the Mendeley Reference Manager application and taught how to install Mendeley Cite, which serves as an integration tool between MS Word software and Mendeley Web Importer, an extension tool in their private browsers. Volunteer students were required to have a Microsoft account in order to insert Mendeley Cite. This Mendeley Cite serves as a personal library useful for managing information sources to be used as references by creating folders with desired themes. After installation, volunteer students practiced using the Mendeley application to cite a work from an article indexed in Scopus. They continued to explore and apply the information provided in the orientation, preparing them to teach new students in the 2023 MABA literacy class. The continued involvement of volunteer students in collaboration with the library will bring even greater benefits to the academic community at the Faculty of Biology UGM. Regards to literacy~. (Rusna, Didit)