December Successes!

The entire staff was very glad to see that we had a turn-out of 100% for the library- sponsored massages yesterday.  We were able to provide free massages for 24 students who signed up in the library the day prior.  Massages were advertised in the library via flyers over the weekend, with additional information posted here on this blog in addition to a posting on the library's Facebook page.  Many thanks to the women of LaJames International College who made the trek up from Iowa City to provide the students with their own respite from the stresses of finals week.  We hope to continue providing fun stress relievers to Coe Students in the future, so please feel free to provide feedback here and through Facebook for other neat ideas that the library could try.

 

On a totally different note, in January is Data Privacy Month.  I'll be blogging more about it in coming weeks (after the much needed holiday break), but in the meantime, feel free to check out these websites to start educating yourself on data privacy rights online.

American Library Association: Privacy Revolution
Educause.edu: Data Privacy Month
 
Great job to everyone for making through another semester, and we will look forward to seeing you all back next year!

-Katelyn, Head of Reference
 

 

Massages at the library

Alright folks, the post last week ended up serving as a bit of teaser, but today we can officially announce that the library will be offering chair massages as a stress-buster for students during finals.  The chair massages will be Wednesday, December 14th from 2-5 PM.  Massages will each be 10 minutes long, and they will be free!  So how do you get one, and what's the catch?

• Sign up will start at 9 AM on Tuesday, December 13th.


• You go to the Reference Desk to sign up.


• Only current Coe students are eligible to receive a free massage


• You must come in person to sign up (no signing up for a group of friends, or by phone/email.)


• The day of the massages, you must check in 5 minutes prior to your massage.  If you do not check in prior to your massage, you are liable to lose your spot to students on the waiting list.

Sound good?  Great!  Swing by the library to sign up for your free massage, and good luck on you finals!

-Katelyn, Head of Reference

Lost and Found

As you start packing up to go home (I personally plan on spending the holidays here at Coe, campus is always so peaceful this time of year), you might notice that you are missing that delightful flash drive/portable computer storage device upon which you stored some important paper/chat transcript/PowerPoint presentation.  You have looked in your bag, in your purse, between your desk and the wall, NADA.  You are desolate.  But wait!  Have you thought to check up at the library circulation desk, home of the library's lost and found?  We have lots of them here, left by undoubtedly industrious students that are probably forlorn over their loss.  So before you go home to have some hot cocoa with those that you hold dear, come swing by the library to see if you've forgotten some vital piece of your academic history here, and good luck with finals next week!

-Bronze Boy

From the Archives...

If you need a quick break from studying, check out the digital exhibits on the archive website.  You can watch old Coe Advancement films, listen to Coe songs, see what the campus looked like in the 1930s, and read about student life (did you know you had to have a permission slip from your parents to attend dances in 1913?).  There are also flunk day posters, the Cosmos from 1890-2008, and George T. Henry photographs. ~Sara

Finals Week Perks

With finals fast approaching, and only one week of regularly-scheduled happenings, the reference department staff has started brainstorming as to things that could be done or sponsored by the library to help ease the pressure on students as they work to the end of the semester.

I have started poking around ye olde Interwebs to see what other schools have been doing, and some of the finds have been pretty neat. At Coastal Carolina University, they have a food cart that travels around the library every hour on the hour in the evenings distributing free treats (healthy and otherwise) to students holed up in the library.  They also sponsored a station in the library where students could create their own stress squeezeballs using balloons and sand.  At UW-Madison, the library created a theme for finals week that was promoted via Twitter while hosting giveaways of things like coffee, Emergen-C, and candy.  The University chancellor also ordered pizza to be distributed for free at the main library one night.  Finally, my favorite, at William and Mary the school arranged for the rental of 8 personal massage chairs (the electric kind) to be available to students during finals week.  The chairs were so popular, the school now leases several chairs all semester long available to students, you guessed it, in the campus library.

Due to its role in campus life, the library becomes a very popular place during finals.  The question is, what can we do make your life better, as a user of the library?  Let us know of ideas that you like, or feel free to get creative with ways we can improve the experience of working and studying in the library leading up to finals!