Presented by: Kathryn Millis and Tiffany Anderson Hebb
During DePauw University’s Winter Term, first-year students must attend co-curricular workshops. (They pick from an array of choices.) Historically, the library’s sessions on various databases had moderate turnout with no particular enthusiasm. We wanted our workshops to highlight our resources and services and be enjoyed by our students.
We designed sessions based on popular games, such as Trivial Pursuit, crossword puzzles, and Balderdash. In playing the "library version," students used print and online reference tools to find the answers.
In addition to the "game" sessions, we offered sessions on popular topics such as Google and Film Studies resources.
These fun workshops have all been fully enrolled, and student feedback has been very positive. The sessions helped us to reach two major goals of library instruction: giving students a friendly face in the library and teaching them relevant research skills.
A Beautiful Mind: Viewing and
Discussion
Prevo Science Library
1/15/2003 7-10 p.m.
Come to Prevo Library to
watch the Oscar-winning movie about mathematician John Nash, and participate in
an after-movie discussion about the fim, Nash's
accomplishments and his struggle with schizophrenia.
Balderdash
Roy O. West Library – Café Roy
1/6/2003 7-8 p.m.
Using the library's
dictionaries, play a version of the popular game where you try to fool others
with the most outrageous fake definitions. Feel free to bring your dinner with
you!
We used this game to expose our first year students to some of our old, specialized, & cool dictionaries, e.g.:
$ A dictionary of the underworld, British & American, being the vocabularies of crooks, criminals, racketeers, beggars and tramps, convicts, the commercial underworld, the drug traffic, the white slave traffic, spivs
$ British English A to Zed
$ Dictionary of yoga
Bring pencils & cards. Divide into groups of about five. Each round:
1. Everyone gets 5 minutes to look through the dictionaries & try to find a word that the others won’t know.
2. One person announces their word.
a. If anyone else knows the meaning of the word, that person must say so, and the group uses another word.
3. Once a word has been found that no one knows, the person with the dictionary writes down on a card one dictionary definition or a paraphrase. The other players write on their cards either a believable definition for the word, or an amusing definition.
4. All the others pass their cards to the person with the dictionary.
5. When the person with the dictionary has all the definitions, s/he shuffles them together with the real definition, and then reads out all the definitions.
6. The others vote for what they think is the real definition.
7. When all have voted, the true definition is revealed, and the round is scored. A player gets a point for:
a. having voted for the true definition
b. every vote cast for the definition you wrote
c. the person with the dictionary gets a point only if no one voted for the true definition.
Give me a G! Science Crossword
Puzzle Challenge
Prevo Science Library
1/10/2003 from 3-5 p.m. and 1/14/2003 from 4-6 p.m.
After an
introduction to Prevo Library science reference sources (print and online),
you'll be ready to solve a challenging (but not impossible) science crossword
puzzle or two.
Good Googly Moogly
Roy O. West Library – IMS Computer Lab
1/15/2003 5-6 p.m.
So you think you know how to use Google to search the
web? Come to this hands-on session and learn about some of Google's best hidden
features.
Looking up Wil
Shortz
Roy O. West Library – Café Roy
1/9/2003 6-8 p.m.
Working in a group, use our reference
collection to solve a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle. Feel free to
bring your dinner with you!
We used a Sunday New York Times crossword puzzle to show students:
Each week the puzzle starts easy on Monday, & gets progressively harder until Sunday, which, according to David Sedaris, “requires the sort of mind that can bend spoons.”
Don’t know the British commander who captured NYC in 1776? Nieuwpoort’s river? 10/10/73 resignee? That’s OK! We found those answers in an encyclopedia of American history, a Gazetteer, & a chronology of world history.
Looking up specific puzzle answers gave students:
Start by giving students ten minutes to just do the puzzle, filling in answers they know. Then show them how to identify clues you could answer with common reference books.
Work in groups, not individually! We all worked together on the same puzzle, & still only found about two dozen answers in an hour. If they’re working individually, they won’t get much sense of accomplishment, leaving with a puzzle that’s 80% empty.
New Library Web Site Usability
Roy O. West Library – dml
1/17/2003 4-5 p.m.
Be our web site guinea pig! As the
library gets ready to unveil our new web site design, you can get a sneak peek
and help us determine any areas for improvement. Plus, you'll learn a little
bit about how to go about conducting a usability test for a web site.
SciFinder Scholar for emerging science scholars
Prevo Science Library – Julian A112
1/8/2003 | 7-8 p.m. and 8-9 p.m.
Learn more about how to use this
science database. Searching for articles and other publications will be the
focus of this session. After a database overview and examples of sample
searches are presented, there will be time for independent searching and
questions. This will be a great time to do research for your Winter Term class!
Martin Luther King, Jr.: What do you know?
Roy O. West Library – Café Roy
1/20/2003 5-6 p.m.
Why do we celebrate his birthday?
Come learn a little bit more about the civil rights leader, while getting
practice with some library tools. We'll give you questions (and help!) - you use the resources to find the answers.
Finding
Out About Films
Roy O. West Library – IMS Computer Lab
1/07/2003 5-6 p.m.
