2009 ALA Annual Conference: My first poster session

I had an excellent time co-presenting my first poster session with Stacey Greenwell. We presented on the University of Kentucky's annual freshmen orientation event, The Hubbub, which I've written about before.

I was a little nervous about doing a poster session, which was a new format for me, but I actually loved talking to all the people who stopped in to learn more about how to show their students what a great place the library can be.

If you would like more information, please check out our posting at the ALA Conference Materials Archive.

The Huge Hubbub - A July/August C & RL News article

The July/August 2009 issue of ACRL's College and Research Libraries News just appeared, and one of the articles is The Huge Hubbub: Freshmen orientation fun at the library, written by yours truly.
I really enjoyed writing about the University of Kentucky Libraries' huge freshmen orientation event, which I was involved in for its first two years, in 2007 and 2008. I'm also very excited to have an article appear in a publication so widely read by academic librarians. I hope I did UK's marvelous Hubbub justice in my story.

photo credit: Beth Kraemer and the Hubbub Photo Booth Team



In related news, Stacey Greenwell and I will be co-presenting a poster session on the same topic at the American Library Association's Annual Conference next Sunday, July 12, from 1:00 to 2:30pm at McCormick Place West. I hope to see you there!

photo credit: Kopana Terry

American Libraries Direct

The Hub @ WT's got some national attention this week, appearing in the American Library Association's e-publication, American Libraries Direct.

A huge Hubbub

On August 25, we had our 2nd annual "Hubbub," a party in the Hub for our new freshmen students to introduce them to the library and the Info Commons. Although I'd thought our first Hubbub was pretty great, this year's seemed like a whole different league of fun. It was almost twice the size of our first Hubbub, with about 700 students and more activities for them to do.

One of our great new activities for this year was a photo booth. Beth Kraemer set up a green screen and Photoshopped students (and faculty/staff) wearing funny hats and holding props onto interesting backgrounds. We showed these on our flat-screen TVs and some of our Video Windows, as well as making a flickr set of them.




Our remaining Video Windows were used for video games. We also had balloon animals, makeovers, a caricature artist, palm reading (had to definitely have this again as it was our surprise last-minute hit from last year), and two tarot card readers. We had pizza and drinks. I think our surprise hit this year was the board games. Students sat on the floor and played Monopoly and other retro board games enthusiastically.

A small touch that I think went over well was putting leis over the heads of attendees as they walked in. Nothing says "party" like wearing a lei. The balloon hats that the balloon artist made also added to the festivities.

photo credit Alice Wasielewski

As for lessons learned for next year:

Ordering more pizza and drinks and having the cups poured ahead of time. Not only did we have many more students eating, but we switched vendors, and the quality of the food was better this year, so students were taking more.

Having a longer Hubbub. We had the prize drawing at 7:15, which seemed too early since all the activities were still going strong, but by the time it was over at 7:45 the library closing announcement was coming over the P.A. Maybe next year we could have a 3-hour Hubbub.

It's only September, but I already feel excited about our Hubbub 2009.

photo credit Kopana Terry