As we’ve done in years past, the Outreach committee is planning and scheduling events and programs to offer our campus community. We need your help in order to offer great programs that our students, faculty, staff and alumni can enjoy. I’ve created a Google sheet that we can use to see and sign up for Outreach volunteer opportunities that we’re interested in and available for. As always, please talk with your supervisor to ensure that you’re available before signing up. Your first priority of course is always your home department; helping with Outreach should never interfere with that!
Here’s a link to the sign-up spreadsheet, and I’ve provided some more info about our current opportunities below.
Voter Registration on Tuesday September 26
We’ll be offering our users the chance to register to vote in a quick and convenient way – at the library! Reps from the Hamilton County Election Commission will be here to answer any voting/registration questions our students may have. We’d also like to have library reps there since these users may have questions specifically about the library and we’d love to answer their questions right there at the table. There is a full faculty meeting that afternoon, so particularly for the cleanup, we’d love to get some help from staff so that faculty members can head over to the UC. However, faculty are of course welcome to help out at any time, particularly with the setup which happens well before the full faculty meeting.
Therapy Dog Visits – Multiple Dates
As this is our most popular program and consistently gets the highest attendance of any of our programs, your help is needed. These visits are a great opportunity to connect with students, and usually the conversations with them offer us a chance to tell them about library or campus programs that can help them. It’s very informal, but these students have self-identified as being stressed (or homesick for their own animals) and love the chance to chat with us and their fellow dog-lovers for a few minutes. Your help is needed in engaging the students, and also with light tasks such as taking photos, using the clicker-counter, putting out signs, or moving furniture to the edge of the alcove to make more room for doggy visitors.
Banned Books Week – Sept 24-30, 2017
No help is needed for this as the Outreach Committee members have done a lot of work over the last weeks to get ready for this. Just be aware that Banned Books Week is happening and there will be displays, buttons, and social media activity related to this. You may get questions about what Banned Books Week is (or you may just be personally interested), so here’s a link to the ALA advocacy site related to it. Pro-tip, don’t search the internet for BBW… it doesn’t always mean Banned Books Week…
Save the Date: Halloween Costume Contest and Library Open House on Tuesday Oct 31
As we did last year, we’ll combine our Open House with the popular costume contest to take advantage of the increased traffic. This will be for a couple of hours in the afternoon (exact time TBD) and each department will have a table. So please think about what resources you’d like to highlight, and feel free to come up with a fun Halloween-themed activity… that’s been popular in the past. Cake and coffee will be provided, as will mini-chocolate bars as treats for Open House trick-or-treaters (as an incentive for them to visit all of our tables). More details will be provided in the coming weeks, but please start your department-planning!