[WEB4LIB] What to do for college's open house

[Richard Wiggins]

Your approach might vary depending on a lot of factors:  Who is the audience? Prospective students?  Their parents?  How big a group do you expect around your table at once?

This is tough enough to do in captive audience setting; it'd be daunting in a "resource fair" type environment.  I would try to have signs and posters that punch up a few very basic points in big and bold letters, and I would keep the demos very simple.  Show some examples of powerful searches showing off your databases. Maybe have some slide show Powerpoint on one terminal also making basic points.  Consider bringing props, such as paper copies of journals that are covered by your databases.

I don't suggest sitting individuals down to surf on their own to any site on the Internet.  Seems guaranteed to lose focus entirely.   

This past summer and this Fall I gave presentations to the incoming freshman class at Michigan State (and their parents) about the requirement that the students have a computer.  A big part of what we tried to convey was the importance of electronic (and paper!) resources at the Library.  In general my sense was that parents understood this better than students. Here's a somewhat related article: 

http://libraryjournal.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=articleArchive&articleid=CA155175

Good luck!

/rich

On Mon, 22 October 2001, Stacy Pober wrote:

> 
> I've been asked to set up a "presentation" of the library databases at
> the College's open house.  I've put "presentation" in quotes because
> from the description of the event, it's not a speech to an audience as
> much as a exhibition or fair type of set up.  People wander from table
> to table to talk to faculty/staff and ask questions.  
> 
> In that situation, I was thinking that the best set-up might be to have
> two computers set up as our public access terminals are in the library,
> so that people can play with them and look up whatever interests them. 
> In our library, logins are not required for access to the databases, so
> that shouldn't be a problem. 
> 
> The library is normally open on Open House days and that will be the
> case this year as well, but our main library building is closed for
> renovation, so we'd rather have a strong presence at the fair than take
> people three blocks away to our temporary quarters. 
> 
> We have two basic setups in the library.  One allow users to get to just
> about anything that's in the internet (though the home page is set to
> the library databases).  The other limits users to the library databases
> and the college website.  I could take either set-up to the open house. 
> I'm wondering if I should set it up for full-access, knowing there's a
> risk that some visitors might hang about surfing for prolonged periods
> or log into their web based mail. (I'm thinking of the prospective
> students bored siblings, for example.)   
> 
> Any suggestions?  Things that worked well/poorly when you did this sort
> of thing?  
> 
> -- 
> Stacy Pober
> Information Alchemist
> Manhattan College Libraries
> Riverdale, NY 10471
> http://www.manhattan.edu/library/

Richard Wiggins
Writing, Speaking, and Consulting on Internet Topics
rich at richardwiggins.com       www.richardwiggins.com