GT CeLIBrates the New School Year: the biggest library party in the nation?

  

It’s all fun and games here, but if you want to read something more thought provoking try the book bashers at Arizona State U.

CeLIBration 2008 went well. Our door count was nearly 600. I’ve written many posts about this annual event in the past and I am not really sure what I can add. Our staff worked well on pulling this off and the new Dean even pitched in to help with the clean up.

Some thoughts

• This year I am going to do some follow-up assessment checking back with students in a few weeks to see if the event encouraged them to visit the library again.
• I emphasized this point before, but we have evolved away from video games. Originally it was about hosting a big LAN party, like this:

        

Sure, it looks impressive and was very cool, but the attendance dwindled each year. Video games are a draw, but there is more to life than Wii Sports. Over the past three years we expanded our offerings reducing video games and increasing the team-based interactions. Each event this year was a success.

• Just to be clear, this isn’t an instructional session, it’s a celebration. It’s a “welcome to Georgia Tech” event. It’s a chance for students to have fun in the library and to meet their fellow dorm mates and peers. It shows that we don’t have to be so serious all the time-- that we are approachable. We want them to see the space, live in it for a few hours, and hopefully feel less intimidated later in the semester. Plus it is a fun bonding experience for staff too.
• I mentioned last year that we designed concurrent sessions and we streamlined that even more this go around. Our goal was to move people around every 30 minutes so that they could participant in more events.

The poster (Thanks Dottie)

The promo clip. (Thanks Dottie)

And here are some photos that captured the essence of the evening. (Thanks Katie)
     

Oh and just for fun, here is some footage from the Project Runway final:

Comments

[stacey.greenwell]

Brian, great job as always on the CeLIBration! You all do such clever things which inspire the rest of us to be more creative. I'm dreaming of that day when we play laser tag at the University of Kentucky's William T Young Library...

My only suggestion is to update your post to let your readers know that UK's Hubbub was the biggest library party in the nation, hands down. And yes, I'm challenging you for next year. ;-)