Author Archives: Debra Kolah

Upcoming Student Event: Bingo Night, Monday, October 6th

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C-MACS is hosting a Bingo Night for students on Monday, October 6th. The scavenger hunt event will start at a table across from Access Services, and take students throughout the building as they look for the locations on their bingo card. There will be packaged snacks, in the spirit of our new Food & Drink policy, at several locations: the 6th floor study area, the 4th floor vending machines, CWOVC service desk, the Government Information librarian service desk, and Fondren 156. The snacks will be labeled with additional information about services and policies. We hope the event will be a fun, lively way for students to learn about Fondren, and navigate the building! Prizes include:  maze pens, highlighters, carabiners, and small notebooks. For the energetic students that get a “black-out” by visiting every stop on their card, additional small prizes include: owl magnets, owl erasers, owl LED lights, and dust cloths. A big thank you to Friends of Fondren for helping with some of the prizes!  Marketing of the event will start later this week. Please encourage your student workers to attend!

Prizes for Bingo night

 

Bingo Night black-out prizes

Questions or comments? Please contact a member of the committee: Debra Kolah (Chair), David Bynog, Sandi Edwards, Jeff Koffler, Jean Aroom, Norie Guthrie, and Judy Howell

 

C-MACS Update: Owl cards

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The C-MACS committee is rolling out a new marketing campaign this Fall. A series of “owl cards” will be placed at service points throughout the library this week, to help inform visitors and students on commonly asked questions. The cards look great displayed graphic-side out, but could also be displayed information-side out.

Each major service point will receive two holders, and the set of 12 cards that make up the collection. Topics include: Food & Drink, Special Collections & Archives, Feedback, Prints, Scans & Copies, Expert Advice, Visitor Services, Research Planning, Geographic Data & Mapping, Study Spaces, Learning Opportunities, Audio Visual Equipment, and Expert Advice.

Inspiration for this project came from the nice “moo cards” Andy Damico, Preservation Librarian, used for Preservation Week in 2013 & 2014.

Information-side displayed

Graphic-side displayed

Owl card close-up

Several students assisted in the usability and quick identification of the topics of the card, based on just looking at the original designs of the cards, and Jeff tweaked the designs to be cute, and instructive. We hope you love them!

Questions or comments? Please contact a member of the committee: Debra Kolah (Chair), David Bynog, Sandi Edwards, Jeff Koffler, Jean Aroom, Norie Guthrie, and Judy Howell

 

Study Room Renovations Update

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Fondren Library Renovated Study Rooms

We have just completed the renovation of 24 study rooms!  All of the rooms feature modern desks, in round or rectangular shapes, comfortable ergonomic chairs, and a stain-resistant carpeting.
The color palette includes green, turquoise blue, and a magnificent purple, all of which are picked up in the carpet. Some of the rooms feature dimmable lighting, and all of the rooms have been painted. In the next few weeks, special screened acoustical tiles with bright and interesting photos by University Photographer, Jeff Fitlow, will be added to the rooms. Images feature student life, and close-up features from around the Rice campus. The study room renovations were guided strongly by student focus groups that were held in July 2013. Some of the important features that students asked for were: bright lighting, office-style chairs, and different flexible layouts for the rooms. Students highly recommended that there be adequate space around the tables to move around, and that the chairs should be able to easily slide under the tables.

The rooms were taken off of the study room reservation system in late May, and will be returning to the reservation system, for students to check out, starting today. Over the next few months photos in the study room reservation system will be updated to reflect the new rooms.  Also, rooms will be categorized by attributes to help students pick the perfect room for the way they study.

A great gallery of photos has been set up by Jeff Koffler here: http://1drv.ms/1nKa2yC

The food and drink policy, going into effect on October 1st, will help these rooms stay fresh.

Update on the Library Catalog Usability Study

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Starting in the Fall of 2012, the Web Team did usability testing on OneSearch with approximately 123 students. That experience led the team to do usability testing on the Library Catalog in the Spring of 2013. The final study, Usability Testing The Classic Catalog & OneSearch is now available on Fondranet.
The Web Team, in collaboration with Technical Services and the IT Team, have been systematically looking at the recommendations that came out of the report, and working on implementing what can be implemented, and looking for additional training or marketing solutions where there is not an easy technological fix. Improvements and changes will continue through the summer, and we will keep you up to date as progress is made. (Web Team Members: Diane Butler (chair), Jeff Koffler, Debra Kolah, Lauren Mueller, Jane Zhao, Sandi Edwards)

Working on understanding user comments.