Making Better Use of Our Librarians

The IB Extended Essay: Making Better Use of Our Talented School Librarians

The Extended Essay is often viewed as a partnership between the student and supervisor, supported by the school’s EE and Diploma Programme coordinators. However, there is another source of expertise in many schools that can sometimes be overlooked: the school librarian.

This matters even more with the new Extended Essay, first assessed in 2027. The revised EE places considerable emphasis on research, evaluation, reflection, and academic integrity. The assessment model itself has changed, including a new 500-word reflective statement on the RPF and greater prominence for discussion and evaluation.

These are areas in which librarians can make a significant contribution.

A librarian should not replace the supervisor, nor should they become another person directing the student’s essay. Instead, their expertise can complement subject-specific supervision and help students become more confident, discerning, and independent researchers.

Here are four ways schools can make better use of their librarians during the EE process.

1.  Developing students’ research skills

For many students, the EE will be their first sustained piece of independent academic research. Finding information is rarely the main problem. A search engine can produce thousands of results in seconds. The more difficult skill is determining which sources are worth using.

Students need to consider questions such as:

• Who produced the source, and for what purpose?
• Is the author suitably qualified?
• How current is the information?
• Is there evidence of bias?
• Is the source relevant to the research question?
• Can its claims be corroborated elsewhere?

This is precisely where librarians can add value.

Rather than simply showing students where the databases are, librarians can teach them how to search effectively. This might include refining keywords, using Boolean searches, accessing academic journals, following citations to locate further evidence, and distinguishing between scholarly, professional, journalistic, and less reliable online sources.

The importance of this extends beyond locating evidence. Students are expected to engage critically with secondary sources, including recognising authors’ perspectives and arguments and considering the strengths and limitations of their research materials.

These skills are fundamental to successful research, but they are also highly transferable skills that students will take with them to university and beyond.

2.  Supporting academic integrity

Research also needs to be managed properly. A student who finds 20 useful sources but cannot remember where a quotation, statistic, or idea originated is creating problems for themselves later in the process.

Librarians can help students establish effective research habits before those problems arise. This could include guidance on referencing and citation, maintaining accurate bibliographic records, organising research materials, distinguishing between quotation and paraphrasing, and understanding appropriate attribution.

The new EE guidance provides greater clarity around academic integrity and the integration of AI. This makes the librarian’s expertise particularly relevant. With generative AI now readily available to students, information literacy also needs to extend beyond traditional sources. Students increasingly need to ask not merely, Where did I find this?, but also, Can I trust it? How can I verify it? And am I using it appropriately?

A librarian can therefore become an important partner in developing a culture of responsible and ethical research, rather than academic integrity being discussed only when something goes wrong.

3.  Making better use of the RRS

The Researcher’s Reflection Space (RRS) provides another opportunity for collaboration. Students can use their RRS to maintain an authentic record of how their research develops. This might include search terms used, databases explored, sources accepted or rejected, changes to the research question, problems encountered, decisions made, and questions to raise at subsequent meetings.

The important point is that the RRS should not become simply another administrative requirement.

Used effectively, it can provide evidence of the student’s thinking and decision-making throughout the research process.

This becomes particularly useful when students eventually complete their RPF. Under the new assessment model, reflection is assessed through a single 500-word reflective statement completed after the viva voce, with an emphasis on the learner’s development and the transfer of skills.

A well-maintained RRS gives students something meaningful to reflect upon. Librarians can support this by encouraging students to document their research journey systematically. They are not telling students what to write in their reflection; rather, they are helping them develop the research habits that give them something worthwhile to reflect on.

4.  Building the librarian into the school’s EE programme

Perhaps the greatest opportunity is to move away from viewing librarian support as something students seek only when they cannot find a source. Instead, schools can build library expertise deliberately into their EE programme.

This does not require the librarian to attend every meeting or become an additional supervisor. A small number of carefully timed interventions could have a much greater impact.

For example, early in the process, the librarian might run a workshop on developing search strategies and accessing academic databases. Once research is underway, another session could focus on evaluating authority, reliability, relevance, and bias. Later, students might receive support with referencing, bibliographies, source management, and academic integrity. The librarian could also support supervisors, particularly colleagues supervising an EE for the first time.

A shared EE research toolkit might include database guides, source-evaluation checklists, referencing guidance, recommended research platforms, AI guidance, and a straightforward system through which supervisors can refer students who need additional research support.

This becomes especially valuable as schools adapt to other changes in the new EE, including the more flexible Interdisciplinary Extended Essay pathway, where students may integrate knowledge, concepts, theories, perspectives, or methods from two DP subjects.

The librarian is then no longer operating at the edge of the EE programme. They become part of a coordinated school-wide system supporting independent research.

Getting the conditions right

There is, however, an important caveat to all of this. If schools expect librarians to play a meaningful role in the Extended Essay, they need to ensure that librarians are professionally supported and understand the EE itself. That means appropriate professional development.

Librarians involved in supporting students should be familiar with the overall EE process, the generic guidance, the assessment criteria, the purpose of the RRS and RPF, academic integrity expectations, and the boundaries of permissible support. They should also understand that subject-specific requirements vary and know when a question needs to be referred back to the supervisor.

This matters because effective EE support is ultimately a team effort.

The supervisor brings subject expertise. The EE and DP coordinators provide oversight and structure. The librarian brings specialist expertise in research and information literacy. Each has a distinct role, but together they can provide students with a far stronger framework for undertaking an independent 4000-word research project.

Final thoughts

The new Extended Essay presents schools with an opportunity to reconsider not only what students need to do differently, but also how schools organise the support around them.

Librarians already possess many of the skills that successful EE students need to develop:

• searching purposefully and intelligently
• questioning sources
• organising evidence
• citing and referencing accurately
• using AI appropriately as a research assistant, rather than to replace academic research, and
• navigating an increasingly complex information environment.

Rather than leaving that expertise on the sidelines, schools should consider how this can be integrated more deliberately into the EE journey.

Ultimately, it is not about whether our highly skilled librarians can help with the Extended Essay, but rather about recognising and making full use of the expertise they can bring to the process.

Adapted from Extended Essay for the IB Diploma by Paul Hoang and Joseph Koszary

Hoang, Paul, and Joseph Koszary. Extended Essay for the IB Diploma. Hachette Learning, 2025.