In 1970, Miriam (Mimi) Sue Dudley developed a set of 20 research scenarios with self-paced exercises, arranged in search strategy order, for a UCLA Chicano student support group. Questions were varied in each Chicano Library Program workbook to prevent cheating. Each exercise required students to use reference sources from an annotated list in order to answer questions. The workbook was utilized for a number of UCLA courses (about 2500 students per year).

Mimi revised and enhanced the workbook over a 10-year period, culminating with her Library Instruction Workbook in 1981. This model allowed large universities or small colleges with limited staff help their students learn how to conduct information research on their own. Many college and university librarians in the U.S. and in other countries copied or adapted this model during the 1970s and early 1980s.