1. From the library to the Net Maria Letizia Sora 1 and Monica Vezzosi 2 1 Faculty of Pharmacy Library, 2 Department of Environmental Sciences Library University of Parma, Parco Area delle Scienze, 43100 Parma, Italy e-mail: marialetizia.sora@unipr.it; monica.vezzosi@unipr.it The University of Parma, located in the north of Italy, is a medium-size University, constituted by 11 Faculties and 43 Departments, with a teaching and research staff of about 1,000 people. The University offers more than 60 degree courses, 32 master courses and 44 PhD for approximately 30,000 students. The University library system includes 6 Faculty libraries and 20 Department libraries, which altogether hold a stock of about 1 million books and 6,000 printed journals, recorded in the OPAC. In addition, in recent years, a considerable number of electronic resources were added to the University libraries collection: about 70 databases and more than 4,000 e-journals (accessible through a database) are available via the University network to all users. The University libraries provide a wide range of services: reading rooms, reference service, borrowing, interlibrary loan, electronic information services, photocopying facilities, information literacy activities. CONCLUSIONS Between 1999 and 2000 a group of 25 librarians of the University of Parma attended a cycle of seminars and laboratories in order to develop abilities related to information literacy and end-users education and organise an educational project addressed to undergraduates. During Autumn 2001 these librarians organised a 19 hours-experimental course for 45 students from different Faculties. Students were recruited through a public notice published on the University libraries Web page. At the end of this course the students were asked to answer a questionnaire and to express their opinions and suggestions. One focus group was organized as well. According to the results, the course was mostly appreciated; several students suggested to divide the course into two parts: one general part, common to all Faculties, and one part for each Faculty, more focused on the specific subjects. In April 2002 the programme, called From the library to the Net, was formally approved by the Rector and the University Senate and was included in curricula studiorum, as an elective activity proposed among the innovations of the recent Italian University reform. Seven courses (of the Faculty of Pharmacy and of the Faculty of Sciences) promptly agreed to this educational offer and decided to assign 2 credits (ECTS) to the course. The teachers were selected within the 25 trained librarians; for the specific parts of the course they were chosen among the subject librarians. The course, lasting 15 hours, was divided into 5 lessons (3 hours each). Students were grouped in small classes (20-25 people). That allowed to adopt an individual approach, to follow students performances and to favour participation and interactivity. The lessons took place in the IT laboratory, so that students could have a networked PC at their immediate disposal and test the research features learnt during the lesson. This was also helpful in involving students in hands-on and group activities.. The lessons always started with a brief lecture on the defined topic (Power point slides were used as a visual aid to point out important concepts). This was followed by some demonstrations, offered by the teacher, who usually chose meaningful examples of bibliographic search taken from students interests or learning programmes. Students were then involved in some exercises, developed in pairs or in small groups. They were supposed to answer some questions and to carry out simple bibliographic search. In this way students had the opportunity to try and practise each bibliographic research tool, proceeding from the simple to the complex and improving their skills gradually. Teachers were available to support them during this activity, which was not formally assessed. The assessment was related to a final test. Students were asked to work individually and to perform a simple piece of research about a stated subject, using all information sources they had learnt during previous lessons. The bibliographic search itself was only one part of the work required, since students had also to describe, discuss and justify the process adopted to perform their piece of research. In this way they were encouraged to reflect on their work and critically assess it. They had to explain why they chose one information source, how they identified the right keywords to search, what kind of information they found and if they considered it respondent to their information need. A questionnaire was administrated to all students who attended the course. They were asked questions about: time (number of hours, time devoted to hands-on activities in relation to time devoted to lectures), place (equipment of the IT laboratory), contents (interest on each of the topics treated during the course), activity (type of involvement, group works), learning outcomes (perception of their own competence before and after the course). The course aimed to present an overview of the most important bibliographic research tools, focusing on the resources available at the University of Parma. 1. Online Catalogues: University of Parma online catalogue, National Italian Catalogue (SBN), Meta-Opac Azalai (providing access to many Italian online catalogues), Library of Congress, British Library, Bibliotheque Nationale de France. 2. Bibliographic electronic databases: Current Contents (ISI), PubMed/Medline, Scifinder (ACS). 3. Electronic journals: full text commercial databases available at the University of Parma and the database of electronic journals at the University of Parma (alphabetical list of all available journals). 4. Internet and the Web: search engines, subject directories, meta- search engines, the invisible Web, the evaluation of Web resources. 5. Citation rules: how to cite correctly books and journal articles, how to cite electronic documents. At the end of the learning activity, students demonstrated a good level of competence in accessing, using and evaluating the information sources. They had learnt how to use Booleans, how to broaden and narrow their search, how to limit their search by fields and the use of thesauri. They also showed an increasing competence in evaluating both the quality of information resources and the reliability of the information found. Most students expressed their appreciation for the activity as a whole, and recognized their progress in knowledge and skills. However, they didnt seem completely aware of their level of competence before and after the activity. This type of information literacy activity seems effective for the accomplishments of the learning outcomes. The available time (15 hours) is enough to deal with the contents and students have the opportunity to practice working individually and in groups. The hands-on activities are crucial to test and try immediately the acquired skills; therefore, the choice to organise the seminar in the IT laboratory revealed to be convenient. The final assessment through an individual piece of research appears the best possible choice in order to evaluate the acquisition of both knowledge, skills and attitudes and it is a good opportunity for students themselves to manage their time, to organize their work and to evaluate their performance. However, this type of teaching activity revealed to be very time consuming for librarians. The involvement in 15 hours of lessons makes it difficult to replicate this experience more than three or four time per year and this experience seems therefore to be transferable only in small or medium-size libraries and departments, where a limited number of students is coupled with an adequate library staff. The authors would like to thank all colleagues participating in the project ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS In 2001 the librarians of the University of Parma developed an information literacy programme in order to make students self-sufficient in the access to the library resources and able to use information in a suitable and critical way. Students were supposed to develop their competencies related to : - retrieving information in an effective way - evaluating the quality of the retrieved information - successfully employing the information - quoting correctly the bibliographical sources. BACKGROUND OBJECT ACTIVITY CONTENTS METHODOLOGY