Coffee, Snacks, and Other Fun Things

Once again, at the end of the semester the library hosted a Finals Study Break for all students to come take a break, relax, and have some free coffee & snacks.

Students Take a Break

Last semester we did this for the first time, and used money donated from team event funds. This time we did things a little bit differently. I had approached Starbucks and Sunflower Market for donations to no avail – then I thought how about just asking for library staff to pitch in? We have a hundred or so people working here – if everyone just gave a little bit we’d be all set. So that’s what happened.

28 librarians and library staff donated everything from coffee grounds to cookies to napkins to fresh fruit to homemade pumpkin bread. One fantastic administrative assistant brought in a huge igloo cooler full of hot chocolate. We got three huge coffee urns, a hot water heater, tea bags, juice bottles, and bottled water.

The event was held on Sunday night from 7:30-9:30pm. This is arguably the busiest night in the semester, and it was packed. Over the course of two hours, we served 365 students.

Students Waiting in Line

We ramped it up a little this round to make it more of an experience. We played classical guitar music and had a gorgeous poinsettia as well as lit candles to set the mood. I had a massage pad I brought in so students could get a quick massage before dashing back to their study rooms. We had comfy chairs and tables set up so there was space for students to sit down for a few minutes and relax. We had a yoga teacher lined up who was going to host a couple of sessions that taught breathing & relaxation, but unfortunately she got a migraine headache at the last minute and had to cancel.

A student enjoys the massage chair

Overall? Huge success. With very minimal work and staff time, and a budget of zero dollars, we reached 365 students. What is the outcome of this, you ask? Why would we want to just give away free food and drinks? Here’s why:

• The library is often seen as an unwelcoming place, and we really want to work on this image. What’s more welcoming than free snacks when you walk in the door?
• We want the students to know that we understand this stressful time of the semester, and we appreciate all the work that they do.
• Students get really stressed out this time of year, and they deserve a break. They will become more productive and more academically successful if they take a break from their papers or projects and get some nourishment.
• Libraries can be places of leisure and relaxation, not just work work work. This event encourages this idea.
• Libraries can also be places of community. This is a good way to bring both students and librarians together.

As long as the genorosity of library staff stays strong, we can sustain this event each semester, and reach our students in new, fun ways.

Focus? Me?

So my library recently went through a restructuring, and on the Undergraduate Services Team where I work we’re gaining two former science-engineering librarians, and losing one of our outreach librarians as well as our graphic designer. I am one of two new permanent librarians on the team, just hired a month ago. To help facilitate the transition, we had two days of teambuilding where we broke down all the work our team does and organized it into categories – outreach, instruction, training, reference & information commons, and the website. We were each placed in one or more of these categories based on our experience; I was put in outreach, reference & information commons, and training. Surprisingly I wasn’t put in instruction even though my job description is very heavy on instruction (I actually was put in there then removed because we had too many people there as it was & I was in too many groups). Then we went off in our groups to discuss that work and come up with a plan for how it’s going to get done.

So now I find myself being pulled in all different directions. Officially, just because you’re in the planning group for a certain category of work doesn’t mean you’ll actually be doing that work. But it’s hard to avoid it. And outreach is huge. There are 3 of us in this group and it looks like the 3 of us will be doing a lot with outreach. (Not to mention the fact that we’re changing seating arrangements in the office based on our work and I’m in the “outreach” group). Which I don’t mind because I really enjoy it, and actually even asked in my interview about if I would get to participate in outreach and was told “probably not.” Ironic, since this appears to be turning into my primary function. And while I’m not in the instruction group, I am teaching two sections of the Skillful Researcher this fall and have heard rumors my name is being proposed for a number of instructional types of work that needs to get done. I’m definitely big on the educational technology and have worked a lot with this in the past 8 months which I’d like to continue to do; I also love being in a classroom. And I am also interested in taking on a new role of looking closely at learning spaces and ways we can improve them. Not to mention reference & information commons & training.

Pretty soon our team leader will be sending out what all the groups have come up with for their categories of work, and team members get to share which ones they are interested in. The ultimate decision for who is doing what is being coordinated by the team leader. I realize I need to focus my energies, especially as a new librarian. And I want to avoid getting overwhelmed and losing quality in my work. At first I thought outreach was what I would most enjoy. Then I got into instruction and really liked it, and applied for this position believing instruction is what I was going to do. Reference and training is a place where I have a lot of experience and the background to do pretty well, and I can see how these can be improved which is really exciting to me. So now it’s time to do some soul searching and figure out how I want to focus, and I need to do it fast… yikes!

The Amazing Library Race 2008

This past Friday we held the 3rd annual Amazing Library Race: Desert Edition at the UA’s Main Library. We broke previous numbers and had 210 participants show up, including students, staff, faculty, and community members. To learn more about this event and how it all works, see my post from last year.

Amazing Library Race - Public Library Station

As an organizer this year, I spent all morning helping with setup and coordinating volunteers, then was a floater during the actual event, and helped with take down. By the time the Amazing Happy Hour started at 5:00 I was completely exhausted. But it was well worth it, and here’s why:

• Participants really learned a lot about library resources and services. They also learned about how to navigate the 5 story building, which is often intimidating – not to mention confusing – for newbies.
• It is the only event held in the library where we have this substantial number of participants who are our primary audience. Exhibits, lectures, and other events don’t even come close. The energy that’s present up and down the library stacks is something you really only get to see this one time a year.
• Marketing a lot this year has made the event known to the campus community. Even those that didn’t make it to the event itself very likely heard about it. We had hundreds of table toppers in the student union that week, and posters around University Blvd. where students are constantly passing by. While we only reached a small percentage of our audience during the actual 2 hour event, we reached many more in other ways.
• This event promotes an image that the library isn’t usually known for. Libraries and the people that work in libraries are fun. And approachable. And we want to help.
• Those that work in the library get to all come together to make this event possible. I coordinated over 60 volunteers to staff the stations & help with set-up and take-down. It’s a great opportunity to work with people you don’t see every day and don’t otherwise get to work with.
• Word of mouth is powerful. I think this event is extremely important, and hope those that joined us that day share some of what they learned with friends, classmates, and colleagues. The actual impact of this event is difficult to measure, but I truly think it has the potential to educate library users far and wide about the many services we offer.

Amazing Library Race - Presentation Practice Room

A few things were organized differently this year:

• Rather than having a raffle at the end of the event where we later contacted prize winners, we gave away all of our prizes during the actual event (with the exception of the grand prize – an IPod). To win prizes, students completed an activity or played a game. 4 prize stations could be found along the trail, but they weren’t advertised to avoid those stations getting backed up. Those that were successful could pick from a list of prizes. As time went on, obviously, the list got smaller. All prizes were gone soon after 2:00. The prize activities were:

Media Station: Play “Scene It?“. This could be answering a question about a movie clip, placing films in the order in which they were released, or guessing what movie an image is from.

Middle Eastern Studies Collection Station: Capitals of the Middle East. Pick a slip from a hat, where there would be the name of a Middle Eastern country’s capital. Correctly state the country’s name and you win. (We had a map displayed of the Middle East to help out a bit).

Reference Desk Station: Knock Down a Librarian. My wonderful colleague Forrest let us borrow his librarian action figure which we set up on a table with a backdrop of reference materials. You stand behind the line, are given a ball, and get one shot to knock her down.

Amazing Library Race - Knock Down a Librarian Game

Express Check-Out: Find a Bookmark. You select a book from a cart of books about desert survival. If the book you pick has an Amazing Race bookmark in it, you win.

• We also had some new stations this go around:

• University College. This is located in the Integrated Learning Center (ILC) right off the courtyard where we have our final station of free pizza, soda, & eegees. Undecided students, which is much of our audience, are a part of this college and receive advising here. Keith Rocci – who is also our partner in crime for the Skillful Researcher course – staffed this station and had students answer riddles to win a ton of prizes that they had purchased.
• Reference Desk. This was a station before but it was combined with the Presentation Practice Rooms; this time it stood alone so it could focus more on the reference services provided at this site.
• Maps. We added this to the microforms station, which is in the same section on the first floor, so students could pick between answering a maps question (based on maps on display) or a microforms question (based on microforms on display where they had to use the machine to find a certain news story). We also displayed a number of globes, including globes of the moon and astronomical globes, which many library users don’t even know that we have.

Amazing Library Race - Maps Station

• We invited students from SIRLS to volunteer for the event. Two did, and after helping handout flyers around campus they got to staff the stations, promote library services, interact with librarians, and have some fun participating a large scale orientation event.

• And we’re working harder to get feedback, so we can prove to the library that this event is worth the time, effort, and money that goes into it. We took CatCard numbers at the opening station so we can gather details on who participated. We are also going to send out a Survey Monkey to gather better feedback from both participants and volunteers. This is all in addition to the feedback form all the participants were asked to fill out during the race. My hope is that once we collect this data, we will have a stronger argument for why this event is important, why it should continue to be supported in the future.

NOTE: video from the event coming soon…

Orientation Begins

Last week was the first New Student Orientation of the summer, where approx. 600 students and their parents spend two days sitting through presentations, running around going to different meeting rooms, signing up for classes & university ids, & touring the campus – all in 100 degree + weather.

Prior to last year, the library’s only role was to staff one of the dozens of tables at the CatConnections Expo; this is an optional expo that takes place on the second day during lunch time across from a number of other sessions & schedule advising. We’ve had some luck at this Expo, reaching 30 students or so each time, but they are very quick conversations as the students are walking by. We give them a brochure, encourage them to come to the Amazing Library Race, tell them as much about our services as we can in a few minutes, and send them on their way.

We’re still staffing this table, which is great, but now we also get to deliver an actual presentation, which is much better. This year I’m coordinating these presentations, which are delivered by librarians and library staff from around the library. Of course it’s not required (which would be the ideal – maybe one day), and it takes place across from 8 other sessions going on at the same time. We get half an hour, and deliver two sessions on the first day of orientation during lunch time. This year it’s a “brown bag” which means the students get to pick up their lunches and head off to sessions of their choosing. Although it didn’t work out that way. We actually only had a couple students still eating their lunches when they got to our room, which wasn’t set up to allow for eating since it was auditorium-style seating and no tables.

But it was a huge success. The first session we had 12 students. The second we had 37! The room only seats 50 (or maybe less) so this was a wonderful turnout. We had a number of people asking questions, and they enjoyed learning about all the library has to offer to get a head start in the fall.

Right now we have just a powerpoint, 10 slides, lots of pictures, few words. We really encourage people to go to the Amazing Library Race and give them promo bookmarks, as well as our standard library brochure (titled “Think Libraries are Just About Books? Think Again…). I’ve been working with a colleague on putting together a short video to show, but it’s becoming more difficult that we originally envisioned due to formatting issues with our video camera. Hopefully by the end of the week we’ll sort that out to play it at orientations throughout the rest of the summer. When it’s done I’ll post it on here, too.

Library Study Break

Last Monday when speaking with a colleague of mine we decided it would be really cool for the library to host some sort of “study break” for the students during finals cramming time. This is something we talked about at the end of last semester but we didn’t have the time to make it happen. This time we thought let’s go for it, even though we only had a few days to plan it (finals began on Friday).

Magically, everything came together. By Tuesday I had communicated with my team leader, he had communicated with the dean, and she had communicated with other team leaders. We managed to secure a $250 budget from the combined donations from team events budgets of Social Sciences Team, Team Y & Materials Access Team. We established a date and time of Sunday at 8pm – the night before finals week, and I’ve since heard the busiest night of the year in the library.

After talking with the knowledgeable events coordinator in our administration office as well as a number of other admin assistants & the manager of Bookend Cafe nextdoor, on Friday I ordered coffee & hot water/tea from the student union to be delivered Sunday evening.

Friday afternoon 3 freezer bags full of cookies were sitting on my desk as donations, left over from a staff workshop earlier that day. I printed signs advertising the event and put them at the service desks.

Sunday afternoon I went to Grocery Outlet and picked up $80 worth of goodies – about 10 packages of cereal bars, a dozen snack cakes, 3 tins of wafer sticks, handfuls of bags of crackers & chips, a case of bottled water, a ton of candy, and 24 bottles of grape juice.

I arrived to the library at 7pm, went down to the information commons to work with the staff on sending a message out to all the computer stations at 8pm letting them know about the event upstairs. We set up in the main lobby near our open reserves/holds section. 1 table for library materials (advertising study areas & new services), water/juice bottles, and the bowl of candy. The other table for all the other food, napkins & plates. And a third table for the coffee, tea, & ice water.

8pm rolled around and students started arriving. By 8:15 there was a line all the way across the lobby area. By 8:25 all the food was gone except for the candy. By 9pm the coffee & tea was all gone, too. Crazy! The students absolutely loved it, though. They were very appreciative and I’m sure needed the break. We’ll definitely have to do this again at the end of the fall semester. I think a cool thing to do would be to have the library staff bake & bring things in. That way we’d save money, have more food, and have personal, homemade stuff from the librarians to the students

The Amazing Library Race

Recently I participated in the UA Library’s 2nd Annual Amazing Library Race. It was even bigger and better than last year, with somewhere around 300 participants, mostly new UA students. The event is held the Friday before classes begin, and is aimed to be an orientation to the library and its services for new students. It’s loosely based on the Amazing Race reality show, and we call ours the “Desert Edition” so many of the questions along the way relate to “surviving & thriving in a desert university.”

I staffed the first station along with a couple other staff members, including Chris from our Undergraduate Services Team (UST), Sam from External Relations, and Yvonne, a library student who was a former intern for UST. This station was the entrance to the race, right outside the Main Library. I was absolutely astounded when I arrived at two minutes before the race was due to start, and there was a line of students stretching around the side of the building. Incredible! Unfortunately we were so swamped at that point no one thought to take a picture, but we have several witnesses

We gave incomers their maps, carabiners (transcribed with the “UA Libraries” logo), and their first “passport” stamp proving they completed the first station. About every ten or so people would win a free gift bag with goodies including a library t-shirt, free slice of pizza (donated by our local Magpies), and earplugs.

There were 12 stations total, located on every floor of the library and in our Special Collections nextdoor. Tasks included checking-in and out material using our Express Check machines, finding information from an article on microfilm, visiting our new Presentation Rooms, and even making ice cream! The ice cream was at the Science-Engineering Library (SEL) station. Rather than make the students travel around campus in the heat to our other locations, SEL and Fine Arts (FA), we just made stations for them at the Main Library. Students learned about the specialty software located at SEL and the selection of music and architecture material located at FA. They learned about the streaming video we now offer, the exhibits in Special Collections, the photocopying and scanning services, our government documents and area studies collections, and of course our reference services. This year we introduced a Pima County Public Library (PCPL) station, staffed by PCPL librarians who marketed their own services and signed people up for library cards.

The participants could go to stations in any order they chose; this prevented stations from getting swamped all at once. Each station required the participant answer a question to receive a stamp. Once receiving four stamps, they could go to the “Desert Oasis” and receive a free water bottle. Once receiving 8 stamps, they could go to the final stop and get free pizza, eegees, and enter a raffle. We received fantastic sponsorship this year and had a ton of raffle prizes, including an Ipod, TV with DVD player, and giftcards to all over the place.

The race lasted two hours, and while exhausting was a fantastic experience and a really great event for the library. The students loved it. Some actual feedback I heard from participants included:

“This is fabulous! Just fabulous!”

“I’ve been to the library before but learned a lot more about its services I never knew!”

“This is great that you guys do this. Cool!”

I hope this continues as an annual orientation event, while it’s a lot of work it is definitely worthwhile.

A Day at the Fair

Yesterday I had the privilege of volunteering for the Pima County Public Library (PCPL) table at the Pima County Fair. Along with my colleague Freddy and PCPL’s organizer Liz, we staffed the table for four hours. As well as being a great chance to mingle with community members and find out their perceptions of their local library, it was an opportunity for me to learn more about what the public library offers. Not only do they have downloadable audiobooks, which I’ve known for awhile, they also now have streaming video available! Very cool.

Highlights included helping passersby sign up for library cards, offering to mail them a card for free if they like. Then having the kids spin the Library Wheel & answer a question about the library to get a prize. This game gave children and parents alike information on library cards, the library’s website, what’s held in the collection, the Teen Zone, and more. As well as stickers and magnets, prizes included funky bookmarks with the library’s name and website printed at the bottom. These were the most popular of the giveaways.

This was a great illustration of how to make the library visible. This has been an ongoing theme in the Marketing course I’m taking right now at SIRLS. Having this sort of presence at the county fair will encourage current library users and expose library services to otherwise non-users. It will tell us what the community thinks about us, and can be a good way to gather customer feedback while also demonstrating that the library is a fun place. It gives the library presence and personality.

One last note: possibly my favorite moment was when a woman stopped by and said to us, “The library is what holds the world together. It’s education.” Brilliant and true.