#AmazingLibraryRace

The Learning Centre, in collaboration with the Self-Service Focus Area team, hosted an event, the #AmazingLibraryRace, during the week of 14 – 18 October 2019. The event focused on undergraduate students and was aimed at developing their awareness of the “self-help” library services, e.g., the self-check systems, library robot, information terminals, social media, etc. The event was conceived in the form of a quiz, based on the reality show, The Amazing Race. To complete the race, students had to find clues, which lead them to the following clues – and so on – until they finished the race after being exposed to all services. Each student completing the race, received a small prize (e.g., stationary, chips, notebooks), as well as entries  for bigger prizes, such as travel and meal vouchers.

The electronic resources are also viewed as part of “self-help” services. Marketing of these platforms and databases was therefore included as a separate, second part of the campaign. For this, students were invited to have a free lunch in the library, sponsored by different database vendors.  During the lunch sessions, one vendor per session gave a short presentation. The second part of the lunch hour was devoted to an informal, interactive discussion with the students, the aim of which was to get students’ opinions of and suggestions about the products and services of the library.

More than 500 students participated in the race, while a total number of 118 students across all faculties in the University attended the lunch hour sessions. The majority of students were from Economic and Management Science (EMS-24%) followed by Natural and Agricultural Sciences (NAS-19%) and Humanities (HUM-18%). The target audience for these sessions was undergraduate students, therefore the majority of the attendees were first year students (47%) followed by second year (31%) and third year (17%) students.

Most students agreed that they learned a lot about the library while having a lot of fun. They are now able to use the self-service products with much more confidence. The organisers agreed to have more events like this in the future.

View the images here: http://bit.ly/2SO2YsU