Communication is the largest undergraduate department at Boston College with more than one thousand majors in the 2004-2005 academic year. Courses cover a diverse range of practical and theoretical areas of communication, including mass communication, rhetoric, journalism, television and radio production and theory, advertising, public relations, media law, interpersonal communication, organizational communication, health communication, and electronic publishing and design.

Beginning with the Class of 2006, Communication majors are required to take a course in Communication Research Methods, covering both quantitative and qualitative research. Majors must also take at least two writing intensive seminars and one theory course, each of which generally involves a 15-25 page research paper.

Since joining the BC Libraries as Communication Librarian/Bibliographer in May 2004, I have expanded the number of library/research instruction sessions through extensive outreach to the faculty. Communication library sessions include:

• Communication Research Methods. Sessions for 3-5 sections each semester. Provide an overview of library research tools and strategies to complement students' learning of quantitative (content analysis, surveys, experiments) and qualitative (interviews, focus groups, textual analysis) methods.
• Writing Intensive Seminars. Instruction sessions tailored to specific research assignments. Courses include: Broadcast Century Issues; Television and Society; Globalization and the Media; Television Criticism; Communication Criticism; Gender Roles and Communication; Fiction, Film and Video; and Radio in Culture and Society.
• Communication Theory. Sessions tailored to research using particular communication theories. Courses include: Mass Communication Theory; and Rhetorical Theory.
• Public Speaking. (Core requirement for Communication majors). Session focusing on finding evidence for informative and persuasive speeches. Multiple sections per semester.

Overall, I presented 13 sessions during the Fall 2004 semester, and 23 during Spring 2005. These numbers may be reduced with the new Research Methods requirement which assures that all majors will receive a basic overview of library research tools and strategies and makes at least portions of some other sessions redundant. (The Class of 2005 was not required to take Research Methods, and some in the Class of 2006 took it before the addition of the library component.) Other courses where the instruction sessions are closely tied to a specific subject or project will be not be affected. At the same time, I may present other optional in-depth sessions on particular communication research tools and techniques.