Although many students do not typically associate studying with Homecoming Week, this year, they may have no other choice. With Homecoming falling right in the middle of the semester, midterms and papers usually take priority over parades and football games.

That is why the Undergraduate library is hosting a series of workshops to help students with all their researching needs.

The Undergraduate library’s Research Rally consists of 9 different workshops, which range in time from about half-hour to an hour long, and will be taking place Wednesday from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm in an effort to inform students about the various resources available. The workshops will be taught by University librarians, CITES employees and instructors from the Writer’s Workshop.

“We’re going to have eight hours of workshops that are designed to try and introduce resources that students may not be aware that the library offers them,” said Rudy Leon, the learning commons librarian and one of the main organizers of the event. “We’re aiming it at fairly introductory overviews, so that even if you don’t have big, intensive assignments, there are still resources that can help you succeed that the library offers.”

With the largest state university library in the nation, one of the main goals of the workshops is to acquaint students with the resources around them.

“We’re in this wonderful position of having a fantastic library with so many resources, but that makes it harder sometimes to find what you’re looking for,” Leon said.

The workshops, which took about a month to organize, plan to cover a variety of different topics, including how to find and use newspaper resources, access government statistics and information and “become a better Googler.”

Leon said attendance will be one of the biggest challenges, hoping that students are thinking about schoolwork during Homecoming Week because it is a time when major tests occur and papers are due for many classes. Drop-in workshops had previously taken place, but folded after about five years due to low attendance numbers.

“It’s an attempt for us to see if it’s time to start launching them,” Leon said. “We know that the information environment is really complicated, and we’re just trying to come up with some ways to make it easier for students to find what they need.” But there is a lot of excitement surrounding the workshops, especially from those teaching them.

“I think it’s a great way to get students into the library,” said Sue Searing, the library and information science librarian who will be teaching a workshop on navigating the library’s Web site.

“A lot of the workshops seem really fun and interesting. If they’re not full, I think I might even try to drop in on a couple of them.” The workshops, which are free and open to all, focus on people less familiar with the library system and research processes.

“I think it’s really important for students to understand the full range of resources the library offers,” said Mary Stuart, history, philosophy and newspaper librarian who will also be teaching a workshop in the series. “We just kind of want to show them what we can do for them as far as helping them to find resources and make sense of them.”

But most of all, she said the series hopes to excite students about the opportunities available them and to get them interested in the library system.

“The goal is to try to keep it fun and try to introduce students to library resources and let them know that we have what they need,” Leon said.