Alexa Orbin, Secondary Education and English major / Gumberg Humanities Library Intern
Over the past few weeks, I have been learning about the research process with Mr. Ted Bergfelt in the Gumberg Library. The research guides he builds help people begin the research process by providing them with relevant resources and materials available through the Gumberg Library. I have learned that these research guides get thousands of users and are accessible to people outside of the Duquesne University community. Under Mr. Bergfelt’s supervision, I have begun to compile the print and online resources to create a complete research guide of history reference works, which will be separated by country, region, or continent. The research guide will include relevant reference works for a wide array of regions and countries. The “History Reference Works” research guide will provide access to dictionaries, atlases, and encyclopedias that are relevant to each country’s history as well as more general world and urban histories. I am excited to be creating a guide that will likely be helpful to a large audience, because the category of “history” is so broad.
I have been shocked by the number of resources provided by the Gumberg Library. I have spent the past few weeks sorting through the different reference works that will be used in the History Research Guide and still have thousands left to peruse. Before beginning my work at the Gumberg Library, I had not considered how vast the Gumberg Library’s resource collection is. I also had not thought about the audience outside of Duquesne that benefits from the resources provided by Gumberg Library.
The research guide creation process thus far has felt extremely rewarding. I have spent the past few semesters learning virtually, and it feels great to be working in person at the Gumberg Library. I am happy to be creating a research guide that will be useful for so many people, both inside and outside of Duquesne. I am looking forward to finishing the guide in the coming weeks and working with Mr. Bergfelt to make it both aesthetically pleasing and useful for everyone!
Building Bridges 