Seven inventive programs attract newcomers on campus
By Michelle Boulé — Library Journal, 11/1/2009
Each new school year, academic librarians are given a fresh crop of students and faculty to entice through the doors, both physical and virtual. Librarians create clever marketing that appeals to their students’ intelligence. They devise games to highlight services. They foster a sense of ownership, offer exemplary service that makes their users’ lives easier, lend devices their users crave, and stretch to reach the community beyond their walls. Here is a handful of programs to mine for inspiration.
Where Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries, Cambridge
What Advertising with Puzzles
Target Students
MIT is home to one of the oldest and largest puzzle hunts in the country, Mystery Hunt, so when the library wanted to do something unique to reach out to students, puzzles seemed a natural. It ran a series of six puzzle ads that could be solved using resources in the library. The ads were placed in the campus newsletter, on full-color posters in high-traffic areas on campus, on LCD screens in the library, and on Facebook. Each student who correctly solved a puzzle was placed in a drawing for an iPod Nano. Some 239 students participated. The library resources featured saw an increase in use after being featured.
What it takes MIT Libraries spent about $500 on advertising and prizes. The puzzles were created by a staff “Puzzle Master” familiar with both the MIT and puzzle community.
Replicate it Is there a puzzle community in your area that could help?
Where Pennsylvania State University Libraries, University Park
What Open House
Target Freshmen
This open house is more than punch and cookies. It occurs over two days and introduces the library and its services through fun, fast-paced, and interactive games. Students can get a certificate stamped at eight different library service areas or participate in an ARG, alternate reality game, to win prizes. This year, some of the swag included laptops and a semester’s worth of free books. Over 95 percent of the 4000 students attending said that this event helped them learn about the library. In the words of one student, “Awesome all around! Go library staff!”
What it takes The event is run by the large staff of the library, and many of the prizes and other expenses are underwritten by donors and supporters. The library spends a significant amount of money on bookmarks, key chains, banners, and general advertising. The library also promoted the event in many places online, including Facebook.
Replicate It Can you get donors to pitch in for some cool prizes?
Where Library at the University of Calgary, Alberta
What The Library Amazing Race
Target Fres
hmen
All incoming students at the University of Calgary are required to take an orientation class with an elective option that introduces them to the sprawling, two-building structure that houses the library. To make the orientation fun and informative, librarians created an Amazing Race–style game in which students would compete against one another. Each participant receives a bag with information about the library, including a map and call number guide. A member of the staff explains the rules to the assembled teams of five to eight students, each team gets a passport, the first clue is handed out, and with the blow of a whistle, the race begins. All of the questions and puzzles can be solved by consulting the items in the bags or on the computers in the Information Commons. Staff at different stations around the library check the answers and stamp the passports. The team with the first completed passport wins USB drives, and all the teams get candy when they finish.
What it takes With inexpensive prizes, the costs for this game are low, but it does take staff time and preparation.
Replicate it If you don’t have a First-Year Experience program, are there other classes or departments that would benefit from an Amazing Race–style activity using the library?
Where University of Tennessee– Chattanooga Lupton Library
What Building Project Wiki
Target Campus and community
Lupton Library has fostered its community’s sense of ownership of the new library by allowing students and faculty to have a strong voice in the building process. The building project wiki is part of a larger wiki the library uses as a form of intranet and committee documentation system. The area for the building project includes video of site visits, commentary on each location, facts about the project, minutes of building committee meetings, numerous mentions of ways to offer feedback, suggested readings and media lists, and a feedback form. The photos are fed from the library’s Flickr account. The wiki’s virtual suggestion box has gathered over 100 comments from students, faculty, and staff. Lupton Library advertised the wiki with a banner and multiple links on the library web site, email announcements, and notices at meetings campuswide.
What it takes Staff time is the only cost. The open source platform, MediaWiki, is run in-house on the library’s servers.
Replicate it Do you have a project that desperately needs community feedback and transparency?
Where Northwestern University Galter Health Sciences Library, Chicago
What GalterList, bookmarking tool
Target The campus community
To push useful resources to faculty and students, staff at Galter Library developed an in-house bookmarking tool that allows users to create, manipulate, and share lists of resources. Librarians create lists for subject areas and classes. Users can develop lists for anything from research to personal bookmarks. Via RSS feeds, the lists can be displayed on personalized homepages for users and by the library staff for different areas of the web site. GalterList has been live for about a year, and a quarter of the lists initiated have been made public. Future installments of the tool will let users follow a particular tag, display multiple lists on a user homepage, and create a display of more than 20 tags.
What it takes Galter Library built this tool in-house, so essentially it is free, minus the staff hours and server space.
Replicate it To replicate this without starting from scratch, you can use an existing tool like delicious.com.
Where Eastern Kentucky University Libraries (EKU), Richmond
What Lending the Kindle and iPod Touch
Target All users
This fall, EKU Libraries gave users something new to check out: the Amazon Kindle and iPod Touch. Users can borrow a device from the main circulation desk and request the download of up to two books or magazines. Books and magazines are loaded onto the Kindle and audiobooks are put on the iPods at the circulation desk at the time of checkout. The devices can be kept for two weeks. Good and bad news: after one month of availability, there is a holds queue for the devices that is more than three months long! The dean of the libraries was very supportive of this project since it gave the library the opportunity to offer formats other than print for the First-Year Program’s community reads book.
What it takes Funded in conjunction with EKU’s First-Year Programs, the cost is about $4000 for the devices and accessories.
Replicate it Is there a grant you could use or a department you could partner with to offer some high-end devices for checkout? Plan for it to be popular.
Where University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Undergraduate Library
What Twitter
Target Anyone, anywhere
The library uses Twitter to announce library events, answer “How do I?” questions, highlight a different database every day, offer search tips, share This Day in History, recommend other campus department events, and alert patrons to service problems within the library. The staff follow all of its Twitterers, scanning tweets for questions that they can help answer and responding to questions received directly. The library’s Twitter feed goes straight to the undergraduate homepage so users don’t have to have a Twitter account to follow the flow. Other campus and community groups frequently retweet library postings.
What it takes Ten LIS graduate students who do the bulk of the tweeting while they are on the reference desk; the project itself is managed by a librarian. Because of the volume of tweeting and the added flexibility, the library has been using Hootsuite, a free professional Twitter client. The library plans to increase the variety of information offered, devise a way to encourage peer-to-peer reference help for students, and reach out to the community.
Replicate it No time for a full-scale Twitter assault? Start smaller!
| Author Information |
| Michelle Boulé, a 2008 LJ Mover & Shaker, is a Geek Librarian living in Houston, TX, and can be found online at wanderingeyre.com |
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