Librarians’ Mobile Scavenger Hunt a Winner

Three campus librarians have been honored for their innovation in creating a Mobile Scavenger Hunt to help first-year students learn how to use library resources for college-level writing and research.

Anne Burke, Adrienne Lai and Adam Rogers are 2012 recipients of the ProQuest Innovation in College Librarianship Award. The award, presented by the Association of College and Research Libraries College Libraries Section, recognizes creative approaches to working with undergraduates, instructors and the library community.

Rather than asking students to follow a librarian on a tour of the building or work through an online tutorial, the Scavenger Hunt throws teams of first-year scholars into a fast-paced game using iPod Touches and the cloud-based multimedia note-taking app Evernote. Students explore the facility and the NCSU Libraries’ website, ask questions of library staff, take photos and text information back to librarians.

After a small beta trial in the 2011 summer session, more than 900 students, mostly from the university’s first-year writing courses, participated in the scavenger hunt in fall 2011. Afterward, 93 percent of participants said they learned something new and 95 percent said they felt comfortable asking a library staff member for help. The project has also sparked productive conversations about teaching and gaming among NC State’s First-Year Writing faculty.

In 2010 and 2011, NCSU Libraries won American Library Association Cutting-Edge Technology awards for the Libraries’ website and for the Course Tools service, an application that pinpoints useful library resources for students by automatically creating a library Web page for every course taught at NC State.