Syracuse University Libraries' workshops help you discover how the Libraries' services, resources, and expertise can support your learning and research. New workshops are offered every semester. Please contact Online Learning Librarian John Stawarz (jdstawar@syr.edu) with questions or suggestions for future workshops.
Workshop recording policy
In order to comply with SU recording, privacy, and accessibility policies:
🎓Learn how to navigate databases and various search tools available at Syracuse University for identifying scholarly or other topically relevant sources within your academic or professional field. Work smarter and not harder. Compare effective strategies for mastering retrieval of content in these environments, including the use of citation tracking tools and artificial intelligence driven features.
Presenter: Michael Pasqualoni, Librarian for the Newhouse School of Public Communications
Intended Audience: Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Sponsored by SU Libraries and partially funded by your graduate student fees
Identical sessions will be given in-person and on-line
Session #1 (In person):
Date: Wednesday September 10, 2025
Time: 5:30-7:00pm
Location: Bird Library, Room 114
Register Here:
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Session #2 (Online)
Date: Thursday September 25, 2025
Time: 5:30-7:00pm Eastern Time
Location: Zoom [*Zoom link will be provided to registrants via email the week of the event]
Register Here: https://syr.libwizard.com/f/gettingstartedviazoom
***Advance registration closes at 4pm on 9/25/25.***
This introduction will provide an overview of Zotero, a free platform that allows students and researchers to save and annotate sources, collaborate with classmates and colleagues, generate citations and bibliographies in papers, and access references from anywhere. Students and researchers of all experience levels are encouraged to attend and ask questions.
Presenter: Winn Wasson, Social Science Librarian
Intended audience: Graduate students and faculty
Date: Thursday, September 11, 2025
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Location: Hybrid in-person and online:
Registration link:
Even though you might be an online or distance student and you are unable to visit Syracuse University Libraries in person, we’re here to support you throughout your learning journey. This workshop will introduce a wide range of critical resources and services often used by online and distance students, including how to use our 24-hour online chat support, access eBooks, request materials through interlibrary loan (including journal articles and book chapters), explore the research process through online tutorials, and get research assistance though subject librarians and research guides. The session will also offer tips on how to access resources at libraries and other institutions near you. We will leave plenty of time to answer any questions you might have about using SU Libraries.
Presenter: John Stawarz, Online Learning Librarian
Intended audience: Undergraduate students, graduate students
Date: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Time: 2:00-3:00pm
Location: Online (Zoom)
Registration link:
Not sure whether or how you might incorporate AI tools into your coursework as a student? This session offers guidance on using AI tools ethically and effectively and will include hands-on activities to explore Microsoft Copilot, which can generate text, images, and other formats and help you throughout the research process. One benefit of using SU's version of Copilot is that your data and interactions will not be shared with Microsoft. Sign up to learn more!
Presenter: John Stawarz, Online Learning Librarian
Intended audience: Undergraduate students, graduate students
Date: Friday, September 26, 2025
Time: 1:00-2:00pm
Location: Online (Zoom)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/59232d835cbfe42975465dca8e57e746
🎓Wikipedia is one of the most recognizable information sources we interact with daily, whether it’s one of your favorite search engine’s top results or even incorporated into your favorite AI tool’s response—but how does it really work? This combination of speaker and workshop event will give attendees an inside look into how Wikipedia works and its origins, but also how we can contribute to it and make it better. In recognition of LGBTQ+ History Month and Latinx Heritage Month, this event will also provide examples and resources for improving the Wikipedia articles for members of these communities.
Presenters: Barbara Opar, Librarian for Architecture, Rebecca Johnston, Social Sciences and Humanities Librarian, and Richard Knipel, CUNY Wikimedian-in-Residence
Intended Audience: Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Date: Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Time: 5:00 PM- 7:00 PM
Location: Bird Library, Room 004
Register Here: https://syr.libwizard.com/f/behindwikipedia
🎓Don’t wait until the last minute—make sure you know how to properly cite all types of sources before submitting your dissertation, thesis, or final project. This session will go beyond articles and books to cover often-overlooked materials such as figures, tables, images, archival items, social media posts, and even conversations. Join us for a hands-on exercise to practice citing these sources correctly and confidently. Please bring your laptop.
Presenter: Michelle Mitchell, Reference and Instruction Librarian
Intended Audience: Graduate Students, Undergraduate Students, Faculty or Staff interested in this topic.
Please be aware this session will be recorded and offered in a hybrid format. In-person registrants will attend in Bird Library, Room 004, and online registrants will attend via Zoom. A Zoom link will be sent during the week of the workshop. Recording of this session will be facilitated by Libraries’ staff, but we please ask for no participant recordings of the session. The recorded session will be shared after the automatic closed captioning is reviewed and corrected.
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: Bird Library (Room 004) and Online (via Zoom)
Register Here: https://syr.libwizard.com/f/citews
Registration for online attendees closes at 4pm on 10/15 https://researchguides.library.syr.edu/workshops
🎓Join the Syracuse University Libraries’ Research Impact Team for a session designed to help you increase the visibility of your research and scholarship, with the goal of maximizing your reach and impact! We’ll have conversations about how the decisions you make early in your research or creative process, like where you publish and which pieces of your work you choose to share (data sets, survey instruments, preprints, etc.); can affect the number of citations and attention your work receives down the road. We’ll also discuss topics such as open access, scholarly profiles like ORCID and Google Scholar, metrics like Journal Impact Factor (JIF), and more. You’ll walk away with strategies you can implement right away.
Presenters: Emily Hart, Life Sciences Librarian and Research Impact Lead; and Stephanie McReynolds, Librarian for Business, Management, and Entrepreneurship
Intended Audience: Graduate and Undergraduate students, and anyone interested in this topic
Date: Monday, October 20, 2025
Time: 5:00pm-6:30pm
Location: Bird 114 (Peter Graham Scholarly Commons)
Register Here: Link
Leave this session with expanded knowledge of pragmatic options for pulling together in-depth background literature within your research by employing scholarly encyclopedias, academic handbooks and related reference sources and search tools.
Presenter: Michael Pasqualoni, Librarian for the Newhouse School of Public Communications
Intended audience: Undergraduate students, graduate students
Session #1 (online)
Date: Tuesday, October 21, 2025
Time: 4:00-5:30pm
Location: Online (Zoom)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/9ada4f651bdac1443c90c0d2a6f29f8b
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Session #2 (in person)
Date: Wednesday, October 22, 2025
Time: 11:00am-12:30pm
Location: Bird Library, Room 046 (ETC)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/9ada4f651bdac1443c90c0d2a6f29f8b
🎓For graduate students, the thesis or dissertation may be the most challenging writing project you have ever attempted. Struggles with time and attention management, isolation, motivation, and writing effectively in these specialized academic genres can sometimes feel insurmountable. This interactive workshop introduces multiple approaches for breaking through the common struggle points in these demanding forms of academic writing. This work is hard, but there are ways to make it manageable, deep, and even enjoyable.
Presenters: Collie Fulford, PhD, Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric; Writing Center Director
Rae Ann Meriwether, PhD, Associate Teaching Professor; Writing Center Assistant Director
Intended Audience: Graduate and Undergraduate students, and the SU community
Date:  Tuesday, October 28, 2025  
Time: 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm   
Location:  Bird Library Room 004 
Register Here:   Dissertation and Thesis Writing
Are you on a research team conducting a scoping review, systematic review, or other type of evidence synthesis? This session offers a timely opportunity to delve into trending topics shaping the field today. Discover how artificial intelligence (AI), gray literature, and a special topic to be revealed closer to the event date are influencing the workflow of evidence synthesis practices.
Presenters: Brenna Helmstutler, Information Studies and Sport Industry Librarian, and Anita Kuiken, Applied Health and Social Sciences Librarian
Intended audience: Graduate students and faculty
Date: October 29, 2025
Time: 4:00-5:00pm
Location: Online (Zoom link will be provided to registrants in a registration confirmation email message)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/4a5a846f1f8b42cc7788513370a9aa99
Ever wonder how AI tools like ChatGPT or Midjourney actually work? Curious why they sometimes make things up or generate biased images? Join this session to pull back the curtain on the AI landscape. The session will go beyond the popular discussion and explore the fundamental concepts behind these powerful tools. You'll learn how to use AI for your academic work more effectively, identify its key limitations, and apply a simple framework to think critically about the information it provides. Whether you're brainstorming research topics, refining your critical thinking, or just curious, this session will help you become a smarter, more confident user of AI.
Presenter: Juan Denzer, Engineering and Computer Science Librarian
Intended audience: Undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty
Date: November 3, 2025
Time: 5:00-6:00pm
Location: Online (Zoom link will be provided to registrants in a registration confirmation email message)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/f0afffd6fec9a869eb63ef40248961dc
🎓Whether you’re conducting lab research, writing a thesis, or working on a policy project, understanding the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) can give you an edge. This session will demystify the CFR—what it is, why it matters, and how to find the information you need. We’ll cover practical search strategies, highlight examples relevant to both STEM and non-STEM disciplines, and show you how to use this resource effectively for academic and professional work. Discover the rules that shape your field—and how to find them fast
Presenter: Juan Denzer, Engineering and Computer Science Librarian, Marianne Donley, Physical Sciences Librarian
Intended Audience: Graduate and Undergraduate Students
Date: Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Time: 5:30 pm – 7:00 pm
Location: Bird Library Room 004
Register Here: https://syr.libwizard.com/f/uscfrguide
Join Patrick Williams, Humanities Librarian and Lead Librarian for Digital & Open Scholarship, in an introduction to ProQuest's Text and Data Mining Studio Visualization Dashboard. PQTDM Studio Visualization Dashboard is a tool that helps users to locate and understand trends and topics within search results from publications licensed on the ProQuest Platform. Learn to identify and map frequent locations mentioned in news articles, uncover the dynamics of sentiment present among documents in a wide array of categories, and discover latent topics and textual relationships among your search results and datasets. PQTDM Studio Visualization Dashboard requires no programming skills and is designed to introduce users to TDM approaches and outputs in a very user-friendly way. The workshop will conclude with a preview of the PQTDM Studio Workbench tool, which is a more advanced tool for doing similar work with much more user direction and agency, complete with an on-platform coding environment and AI assistant to guide your work.
Intended audience: Undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, staff
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2025
Time: 2:30-4:00pm
Location: Bird Library, Room 046 (ETC)
Registration link: https://syr.libwizard.com/id/8cfcbf1e02a24d1bb675525d51bf35c0