National Library Week… for Academics… in a Pandemic

We are wrapping up National Library Week, which has always been a bit of a conundrum for me as an academic librarian. I’ve felt, perhaps incorrectly, that it was more focused on our public library colleagues. I would usually change the library’s social media headers, post the official graphics from ALA, and leave it at that.

This year, however, we tried a couple of events. Though our campus has been in-person all year, we decided it was safest and simplest to keep everything virtual. Our first Zoom event was a “coffee chat” open house targeted at faculty. The discussion topic was inquiry-based learning, and I read the delightful children’s book What Do You Do With an Idea? to get the ball rolling. It’s difficult to persuade faculty to attend an optional meeting in the days following Easter, unfortunately; we had low attendance, but the conversation was good!

The other event was a Library Trivia Night geared toward students (though open to anyone). I gathered up bits of library trivia and made a Kahoot! quiz. All three of our librarians attended (and so did my husband), and the student with the highest score won a $15 gift card to the campus bookstore. We had a handful of students participate, and they all even stuck around to chat after the game was over!

I also created a Padlet for people to share what they love about the library and what they would like to see more of. I think we are going to leave the link on the library’s homepage even after the conclusion of National Library Week to get patron feedback.

How have you (or haven’t you) celebrated National Library Week in your academic library?