Telling The Library Story brick by brick. Upcoming talk at #EMEARC16

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OCLC will be having their EMEA Regional Concil Meeting in Madrid, Spain on 1 – 2 March 2016. The topic for the conference is “The Selfie Generation: Their digital lives, social spaces and education needs“.

By The Selfie Generation OCLC means the generation of young people growing up not just knowing the Internet, but living openly on it.

I will be giving a talk on our work with LEGO Stop-Motion movies to connect with new students at the University of Copenhagen. We made the first movie in 2014 as an intro to The Faculty Library of Social Sciences and followed it up with another movie in 2015 as an intro to Copenhagen University Library.

Why LEGO and Libraries?

Here is why we do LEGO Library Moves (a part from all the awesomeness):

Every year academic libraries around the world make a great effort to reach out to the new students that starts at universities and educational institutions. It’s a tough crowd to reach. First of all they don’t need the full library packed when they start and we really really wonna tell them how important a player we are in there study life and all those great things we can do for them. We need to tone that down. Many of them are starting a whole new life and the library is not the center of that. Beers, who to hang out with, who to make out with and a new life of lectures, campus life and studying is was at the center for them.

But we still need to reach them somehow, so we do a model where we hook up on the study counseling department intro’s which are mandatory and we simply send librarians out to these events to briefly introduce the new students to there library services; locations, opening hours, course literature, print and copy (it’s important for them!) and stuff like that. No more than 10 minutes. And then we like to give them just a little bit extra to make sure they remember us and gets a good first impression of there library. That little bit extra turned out to be LEGO Library Stop-Motion movies lasting around 3 minutes. We did two: the first one local for The Faculty Library of Social Sciences and the second a intro til Copenhagen University Library + faculty and department libraries.

The impact of LEGO Library Movies has been massive and new + old students has really connected with this ind of library intro in a positive way. No doubt: A Library LEGO Movie is not the most important communication tool to connect with (new) students. That is, without any question, the skilled and hardworking librarians that meet them face to face and welcome them to there new study life with great professionalism and a smile on there face. But I do believe that this little LEGO movie – combined with the librarian and all the other communication we do – just bridge the world of libraries to the newbies at campus a little stronger. And if it doesn’t no harm is done – everybody loves LEGO, right?

Pop some popcorn and enjoy the show

Welcome to the Faculty Library of Social Sciences: