Enhancing library research skills of graduate students through guided autobiographies

As an interdisciplinary field, Gerontology shares with History, Literary Cr iticism, Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology the use of autobiography a s a primary research tool. In addition, Gerontology, like Counseling, Socia l Work and Psychoanalysis, uses autobiography as a counseling technique. We believe that autobiography also has merit in orienting older, non-traditio nal students, and students in social work related fields, to the library an d its resources. In this paper we describe a pilot project based on this th eory.