Hubbub 2011 Recap

Apparently the fifth time's a charm, so I'm not going to go into as great of detail as I did for previous Hubbub events (2010, 2009, 2008, 2007). The event was pretty much perfect, reaching over 400 students. We only had two problems the entire day: we couldn't find the green screen for our photo booth (ie, green plastic tablecloth) or our prize drawing tickets during early morning setup, but terrific folks from UK Libraries (thanks Doug and Sherree!) quickly came to the rescue.

We did a few new things this year. We invited the Writing Center and the campus tutoring center to join in on the fun. That went so well that I wondered why I hadn't thought of it in the four years previous. We kicked the video games up a notch with an Unreal Tournament from KY Trade in the lab and a full size Galaga arcade game thanks to Louisville Arcade Expo, in addition to video games old (a Vectrex, seriously) and new. Students once again had fun with board games and coloring pages, and the new face painting booth was a major hit. We went with a less dangerous "minute to win it" type game this year using a broom and marbles (no throwing floppy disks across the lab), but it still remained popular. And of course, Gilbert the Balloon Artist continued to wow the crowd like nobody else can.

I didn't play as great a role in planning the event as years past, largely due to my new job. We definitely couldn't have done this without our planning team (Jen, Jennifer, and Shawn) as well as the few dozen faculty, staff, and students who helped. This is a great event, and as long as I'm at UK, I can't imagine not being a part of it. What a way to kick off the new semester!

Photos by Whitney Hale, UK PR

Hubbub Party: The Best for Last

The last Hubbub party I coordinated was probably the best one. For the fourth year, UK Libraries and UK IT welcomed students to the Hub, the information commons in the Young Library. This event is part of K Week, our new student welcome week. We had a killer time slot, though our crowd was somewhat smaller than years past. Every year there are multiple activities going on at the same time, and this year was no different. Some of us speculated that the students might be a bit worn out; one student even told me that he'd had enough free pizza. Who knew.

Our activities went off without a hitch: the Amazing Palm Reading Librarian, the photo booth, video games, board games, and coloring pages were back again. This year IT added a couple of "Minute to Win IT" games which were quite popular. One of the games involved throwing as many floppy disks as you could across the computer lab into a trash can. When asked how much a floppy would hold, one student rather authoritatively said "1 GB!"

In years past (2007, 2008, 2009), this recap post described what didn't work and what we would do differently. This year I am actually stumped at that one. Yes, we ran out of cups again, but our friends at Canteen vending found some in the truck, so no one even knew. Yes, due to the lack of snafus, I had too many volunteers, but most of us got to watch the party and interact with students more than ever.

What will I suggest for future planners? Bring back Gilbert the balloon artist. Street Fighter for Dreamcast is more popular than any modern game. You can't have enough coloring pages and crayons. Some of our simple, initial ideas remain the best ones--the Amazing Palm Reading Librarian and the photo booth are still huge hits.

Thank you to all the staff who have helped over the years to make the Hubbub a successful and memorable student event. We could not have done it without you.

This terrific little video is a great way to end this post:
https://stream.uky.edu/bbstream/WilliamTYoung/TheHubbub2010/index.html

Hubbub 2009: Third Time's a Charm

After the experience of two parties (Hubbub 2007 and Hubbub 2008), I think we're close to getting it right. Similar to last year, we had around 800 students visit our information commons during a two hour period.

Staff felt like it was much bigger than last year, so perhaps our counting technique (door counts combined with prize drawing registrations, giveaways, etc.) is a little flawed. With five entrances to the space and students in and out all night, it's pretty much impossible to get an accurate count. Regardless of the number, it was clear as could be that students were having a great time.

Some things that really worked in our favor this time:

Time slot. The first two years we held the party from 6-8 pm with the library closing at 8 pm. This created some logistical issues, plus there were multiple conflicts with other events. No matter when you plan something during K Week, our freshman orientation week, there are always competing events.

Due to some schedule changes, this year we were able to move the party from 5-7 pm which reduced our competition somewhat and gave us an hour for the party games and socializing to wind down naturally before the building closed. While lines to organized events were cut off well ahead of 7 pm (more on that below), students playing Scrabble, drawing, or just hanging out were welcome to stick around. Some even helped us start pulling down decorations. This was so much better than staff shooing students out of the building.

Publicity and K Week Staffing. The K Week folks were so pleased with our event the first two years, they gave us even more publicity this time around. The K Week schedule is a 30+ page booklet of events, and it can be easy to get buried in there. Thankfully we were selected to appear on the abbreviated schedule, as well as on the giant calendar posters displayed all over campus.

The K Week staff provided us with a large group of K Crew student volunteers to assist with the event. I put them to work in several areas, mostly playing board games and corn hole with students as well as working on coloring pages. Who would want to hang out and color with a librarian?
Photo Booth. As far as activities, the Photo Booth was back again this year. I think the staff have as much fun with the photo booth as the students (check out these photos for some laughs and maybe a few librarians you'll recognize). In any case, we all have a blast. We require the students to sign photo release forms, so this also gives us images to potentially use for publicity purposes.

We improved our setup this year by using whiteboards as retaining walls around our makeshift studio. We had so many props (borrowed from staff) that I actually assigned a "prop master" to help keep the space organized. We also set up one of the Hub's video windows to display the pictures in a slideshow so students could enjoy their photos almost instantly (as soon as our Photoshop guru Beth had done her magic).

Board Games. We brought board games back again this year, and they were a huge hit. Who knew that Scrabble, Clue, and Battleship would be so much fun? These I also borrowed from staff--in those days leading up to the event, my office looked like I was holding a garage sale. It was even worse afterward.

Coloring Pages. I got this idea from another library, and wow, coloring never gets old. This was such an easy, low-cost activity, I plan to keep coloring pages around for exam weeks and other times when students just need to kick back and have fun.

Palm and Tarot Reading. Our lovely palm reader Jo was back for the third year straight, and it was truly the line that would not end. Michelle, another UK librarian, joined in the fun by reading Tarot on the other side of our help desk.

Video Games. This year we got the video games right. I found an expert and all around nice guy, Keith Raney, who set up the games for us and made sure the students had a good time. Basically I was able to forget about the video games and think about 100 other things. It was so great to have someone here to take care of everything. Thank you, Keith! Incidentally, Street Fighter for Dreamcast is incredibly popular, especially with the old school controller setup.

Balloon Artist. Once again, Gilbert Adams, balloon artist was the hit of the evening. Some students waited well over an hour (more on that later) for one of his amazing creations. In addition to being so talented at creating these art pieces (seriously, check out my bookworm), he is also an excellent teacher. In just a few minutes, I learned how to make a pretty convincing balloon dog.

Prize Drawing. The first couple of years, we created prize drawing slips to collect student email addresses. I had all of these grand ideas of contacting them. This resulted in: impossible to read handwriting and names impossible to pronounce correctly. This year I abandoned the idea and used tear off tickets. Easy peasy.

The first two years we made dozens of phone calls and trips around town (I still owe you, Reinette and Krista) for t-shirts, coupons, etc. It was an enormous amount of work, and it also resulted in a prize drawing that lasted a half hour. This year I abandoned that idea and we drew for only 9 prizes, but all were fabulous (thank you to Windstream, Microsoft, Dell, and MoreDirect).

Weather. Okay, so you can't control the weather. We got lucky this year with beautiful sunny skies and unseasonably pleasant weather. Last year we had torrential downpours a few minutes before the party started. Blah.

So now you must be wondering what was not so good:

Pizza snafu. We used the same pizza vendor as last year. Prices were great, pizza was tasty, they were easy to get along with, plus they could chill 100 2 liter drinks for me so I could avoid dealing with ice (see 2007 for the ice story). They also provided all the plates, napkins, and cups at no charge.

For some baffling reason, even though we clearly told them and even though it was on our payment form, they did not bring the plates, napkins, and cups. So imagine this: it's 4:45 pm, students are already lining up, we have 150 pizza boxes stacked up, and essentially nothing to serve them. The delivery staff cleaned out their truck of what little paper ware they had. I sent several staff in search of any cups, plates, or napkins they could find cached in staff areas throughout the building for cake parties and such. I also sent staff to the restaurant in our building to see what we could borrow. We took every piece we could find--5 cups here, 10 party napkins there, all mismatched--we took it all. Meanwhile the delivery staff headed back to the store to bring us enough plates and cups to get through the evening. It was quite unpleasant, but we got through it. Bottom line: I am buying my own plates, napkins, and cups from now on.

Line control. With two years of Hubbub logistics experience, I thought I finally had things worked out. We had a couple of areas where lines were too close or were partly hiding an activity, but for the most part it was okay. What was troublesome was figuring out when to cut off the lines.

The event ended at 7 pm and we closed at 8 pm. Obviously students would stay indefinitely for a palm reading or for one of the prized balloon creations. I couldn't keep staff there all night, so I planned to cut off lines at 6:45 pm. Almost immediately I saw I would have to bump it up, so I cut them off at 6:15 pm. Even doing that, the last student in line got a balloon at 8 pm. I felt like I should have given out awards for the kids who stuck it out the longest. They left happy, but I was still amazed that someone would wait in line for 1 hour and 45 minutes. Bottom line: I'm rethinking the locations of everything, and we may have a make-your-own balloon art activity instead.

Staffing. The event would not be possible without staff from IT and the Libraries volunteering to help (it takes around 30 staff volunteers, and with us now plating the pizza and pouring the drinks, we need even more). I realized about halfway through the event that I did not have quite enough help (largely due to the pizza snafu consuming so much time), so I spent much of my time moving staff from one area to another as needed. To the observer I expect it looked like things were running smoothly, but much was happening behind the scenes.

I have also recognized that the same staff often do the same things every year, and I suspect some of them are getting tired of it. I would. I have attempted to vary what the staff do (I try to give last year's pizza crew a break this year, for example), but it's tough to do. Bottom line: Rethink volunteer solicitation for next year, perhaps relying more heavily on K Crew students.

In the end, despite some glitches, the event was a great success. We're all tired, but we're already thinking about next year. A huge thank you to everyone who made Hubbub 2009 the best library party yet!

Photos by Kopana Terry
Photo booth photos by Crystal Heis, Shawn Livingston, Beth Kraemer

Hubbub is Almost Here

It's hard to believe, but our third annual Hubbub party, an event in our commons to welcome students to campus, is only ten days away.

Even though I have more experience now with planning such a large scale event, I feel less prepared than usual. Perhaps some of that comes from being one of the featured events this year during our "K Week" series of orientation events on campus. K Week has kicked into high gear on the social media front as we're now twittering and using our private campus social network to share information, as well as Facebook and more traditional venues. It will be interesting to see how large the crowd is this year...

In any case, I'll be back in a couple of weeks with my usual series of recap posts (here are recaps of Hubbub 2007 and Hubbub 2008). Wish us luck!

Poster Session at ALA

ALA poster session attendees, thanks for stopping by to talk with Alice and me. I wrote a series of posts about our welcome party in the library (the Hubbub) during freshman orientation week:

Hubbub 2008

Hubbub 2007

I'm writing this from my phone so hopefully it looks okay. More later.

Article on the Hubbub

My former colleague in the Hub, Alice Wasielewski, has just written an article about our experiences from Hubbub 2007 and Hubbub 2008, our party in the library during freshman orientation week.

The article has just been published in the July/August 2009 issue of College and Research Libraries News. Way to go, Alice!

Going to ALA?

If so, you should come by the poster sessions in the exhibit hall on Sunday, July 12, at 1 pm. Alice and I will be presenting the poster session: Causing a Hubbub: Hosting a Freshmen Orientation Extravaganza at the Library.

You'll learn about our experiences from Hubbub 2007 and Hubbub 2008, and I can tell you a little about what's in the works for August.

Stop by and see us!

Talking about the Hubbub

I do enjoy talking about the Hubbub, our welcome party in the Hub during fall orientation week, so much so that my Facebook friends who know nothing about my job know all about the party by August each year. This year should be even bigger, as the Hubbub is now one of the major events during K Week. I'll start planning next month and will likely share some of those ideas here throughout the planning process.

Anyway, as much as I like writing about the Hubbub and talking about the Hubbub on Facebook, I really like talking about the party in person. Earlier this month I did just that, along with former colleague Alice Wasielewski, at the Kentucky Library Association Academic and Special Sections and the Kentucky Chapter of the Special Libraries Association Joint Spring Conference. To create a more party-like atmosphere in our post-lunch time slot, we distributed leis to session attendees (good idea, Alice!). Later that afternoon I heard a few people asking where they got the leis--should have attended our session!

We will be sharing our Hubbub story again at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago on July 12 at 1 pm in our poster session, "Causing a Hubbub: Hosting a Freshmen Orientation Extravaganza at the Library." I am not sure yet if I will be attending the conference, but I know Alice will be there at Table 1 ready to share lots of information and advice about throwing a party for your students.

Photo by Beth Kraemer

Creative Recycling at the Hubbub

So what do you do with 200 cutouts of the William T. Young Library that are invitations for an event held earlier this year?

Why you make hats out of them, a la Burger King or Long John Silver's. Shawn, you are brilliant. Here's an example of these fine hats being worn at the Hubbub.

Hubbub 2008 Recap: Our Biggest Party Yet

Despite a torrential downpour about an hour before the event as well a few competing events (fraternity open houses and a Grease sing-along--pretty tough competition!), Hubbub 2008 shattered our attendance record by nearly double. We took a very conservative estimate on the door counters and door prize drawing slips and still came up with over 750 students visiting the Hub in a two-hour period. (I love the stuff they do at Georgia Tech, but sorry Brian--I think the Hubbub was the biggest library party in the nation.)

What Rocked

Advertising/Promotion. Clearly we couldn't have been more pleased to see such a large, enthusiastic crowd. We owe a large part of that to the terrific staff at UK's New Student and Parent Programs office for highlighting the Hubbub on a large poster of key K Week activities. We were also designated a rally point for the night--basically a recommended place to go to meet people. I said it last year, and I'll say it again--to have a successful event, it is essential to work with staff who coordinate new student events on campus.


Advertising an event geared at new students is challenging--most do not arrive on campus until the Friday before our Monday event. If you try to catch new students at summer advising conferences, they won't care (understandably so) as they are thinking about financial aid and housing and all the big stuff--who cares about some library party. So basically we have to wait until a few days before the event to really push the advertising which we do through being an official K Week activity, but also through Facebook and lots of paper flyers and posters on campus.

Another success in advertising this year was participating in the Resident Advisor Resource Fair again. What particularly delighted me this year was that repeatedly RAs would tell me that they remembered the Hubbub from last year or that they loved the Hub in general, and you bet they would be sure to tell all their advisees what a must-attend party this was. Clearly those RAs must have gotten the message across! If you have a similar event on your campus, be sure to get involved with it. What better advertising than to come from peers (plus this saves you the trouble of going to every hall to tack up flyers--many of the RAs will gladly do that for you).

Photo Booth. The photo booth was a killer activity, and something we definitely plan to do again in the future (thank you Beth, Crystal, and Shawn!). Who knew how much fun students (and um, staff and administrators) would have mugging at the camera dressed in silly hats. We of course got releases on these photos, so we plan to use them for various promotional materials in the coming year. The setup wasn't incredibly difficult--a green screen, lights, tripod/good camera, and a Photoshop expert with her laptop nearby. Staff lent us hats, books, and other props which students could choose for their picture. Once Beth Photoshopped the image a bit, we displayed them in a slideshow on two of the Hub's video window projectors for all to enjoy during the event. It was really a lot of fun--we have the pictures to prove it!


Runaway Surprise Hits. Last year's event should have prepared me for the unexpected surprises in dealing with first year students. Who knew they'd love the Amazing Palm Reading Librarian so much? This year in an attempt to expand our offerings (and give Jo a bit of a hand with the long lines!) we added two Tarot readers. Even then, we still had three pretty long, definitely non-stop lines.

By the same token, things that seem easy or even borderline hokey end can end up being hugely popular. We simply put out some board games--my thought was "play the real deal now that Scrabulous is gone"--and they were a hit. We thought balloon animals would be kind of fun, but who knew we'd have a neverending line for two hours. It helped I'm sure that we had an outstanding balloon artist (thanks, Peggy P!).

Now I'm really wishing I'd put more effort into getting pony rides.


Staff. One of the best things about putting on a major event like this (aside from the fuzzy feeling of seeing students so happy in the library, and even better when they keep coming back to the library for the important stuff) is working with a great bunch of people to make it happen. I couldn't have done this without our staff volunteers and our planning crew (Alice, Krista, Peggy P, Peggy A, Gail, Debbie). We had so much fun working together, and it was terrific to see the event come together with relatively few problems. Thanks you all!



What Didn't Work So Well

Along with record-breaking crowds come some problems, however. We never expected so many students there, so even though we'd increased the number of pizzas and added 600 cupcakes to our food offerings (this year's Hubbub was birthday-themed to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the William T. Young Library), we ran out of food in 30 minutes as opposed to my planned one hour. Even worse was the fact that we ran out of drinks and had to make a quick run to the store (thanks, Debbie!). Now that we've scaled up the party to a new level, I'm preparing for next year by planning on several things:

• Increasing the pizza and drink order by 50%
  
• Serving one or two slices per plate (Hate to be that way but we saw one too many eight-slice heaps at the party)
• Creating a separate drink station with drinks labeled in rows and pre-poured

In addition to food issues, we had some issues with lines and basic crowd control. We've been very careful these last two years to move the furniture to maximize walkways and place the activities so that lines will wrap fairly neatly. We also staff at least 1-2 people per zone to help keep things moving. Still, with several hundred students in the space at one time, it was next to impossible to keep a handle on the lines and make sure things moved smoothly. The students didn't mind, but I think we could do it better next time by:

• Increasing the number of staff to coordinate lines. This year we'd also planned to have staff distribute snacks to those waiting in line, but we didn't do that as we ran out of food more quickly than anticipated.
• Give more space to the most popular activities. Who knew balloon animals would be such a runaway hit? The balloon animal line unfortunately kept getting tangled up in the makeover space, which didn't get the attention it deserved due to the sprawling balloon crowd.
• Consider reducing the number of activities. I look at the activity map for the event, and I wonder if maybe we had too much going on. Some students simply wanted to gather round a game of Monopoly on the floor, but that was challenging with so many competing interests in the same space.
• Along the same lines, consider cutting back the video games. The most popular were Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Mario Kart for Wii, and surprisingly, Super Mario World on Wii virtual console. It was difficult to do much with the Wii because of students cutting through the space--we had issues with the sensor bar being knocked down even though we put up lots of caution tape. The virtual console idea was inspired (thanks, Jason!) and we drew quite a crowd when we started kicking it old school Mario.

We've come a long way since our first Hubbub, which was only one year ago. This year was a great experience, and we're already thinking about 2009.












Non-photobooth photos by Kopana Terry.

See the Hub Groupies for more photos.

Hubbub Photo Booth Images

I'm hoping to work on a recap of the Hubbub over the weekend. Until then, enjoy some pictures from our photo booth (thanks for the video, Patsy!):

The Hubbub is Almost Here

The Hub's big K Week event is less than two weeks away! We've planned a number of fun new activities this year, including a makeover counter from Sephora. I'll be sure to do a lengthy write-up after the event.

Getting Ready for the Hubbub

On Friday, Shawn, Beth, and I did a test run of the "photo booth" planned for the Hubbub, our big student party on Monday, August 25, 6-8 pm. The photo booth is one of many activities scheduled for the evening. Our plan is for students to put on silly hats and other props if they wish (or even hold a book!) and get a picture made in our studio. Upon signing the standard university release, we'll do a bit of Photoshopping and post to flickr. Should be lots of fun! Here's my test shot from the photo booth.

Summer Projects: Hubbub, New Tutorial, etc.

As with last summer, I've been too busy to post much to the blog. I've picked up a few readers so I thought it might be nice to summarize a few of the big summer projects I'm currently working on. As time permits, I'll write up much longer posts on each of these projects--the usual what worked, what didn't, what I'd do differently next time. Whoever said summer was quiet on a university campus?

The Hubbub/10th Birthday of Young Library
Last year we launched our Information Commons (the Hub) to students with a big party (The Hubbub) during freshmen orientation week (K Week). Our second annual Hubbub (Monday, August 25, 6-8 pm) conveniently coincides with the 10th anniversary of the William T Young Library, so what better idea than to make this year's Hubbub birthday-party themed? Some of the fun stuff on tap:

Video games. This year I've been more focused on my backup plan more than on anything--some of you may recall that our video game provider failed to show up for last year's party. Thankfully free pizza kept the crowd calm.

The Palm Reading Librarian. This was a wildly popular activity last year which we definitely plan to bring back for the Hubbub, Part Two.

Zumba dancing. We've got to keep it fresh, so we're trying a Zumba demo/instruction/dance class rather than bellydancing this year. Some of you may know that I'm a Zumba freak so it seemed appropriate.

Photo booth. We considered this last year but just ran out of time to get it together. Basically we're planning a blue screen setup where students can get their pictures made with various silly props and then we'll Photoshop 'em like crazy. Upon signing a release, we'll post to a photo gallery online.

Pimp my Avatar. We did this last year and I expect we'll have an even bigger audience now that UK has its own island. Two UK library staff are also Second Life fashionistas who will help students with the hottest new avatar looks.

Cariacature artist. An art student is going to draw cariacatures for us (one of many birthday party-inspired ideas).

Balloon artist. Who wouldn't want to take a cute little Kentucky wildcat back to the dorm? Everyone loves balloon animals!

Board games, cornhole, ladder golf. These are all easy things to throw together pretty quickly thanks to staff lending us games, and I plan to have them spread around the area. I have a feeling that Scrabulous mania might translate over to the real deal.

Whiteboard art. When you prepare your information commmons for at least 500 students, the furniture has to go somewhere. Even if you use a bunch of the whiteboards for signs, what do you do with the rest? Have a silly whiteboard art contest, of course!

Makeover counter. I really wanted to do this last time, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the opening of a new cosmetics store in the mall will give us the opportunity to do this. So far, they are interested but not yet committed. Can you imagine how exciting a free makeover would be to the average 18 year old (or any woman, really--I've already had staff asking me if they could partake!). Wish me luck on this one.

Free pizza, cupcakes, snacks, and prize drawings. This is a lot of work to coordinate, let me tell you, especially trying to get prizes for the drawings (thank you, Krista!).

With that many activities, you can imagine all the planning going into it. I haven't even mentioned staffing or publicity yet. I'll save that for a series of lengthy posts after the event.

New Library Tutorial
You might recall last year that we redesigned our library orienation PowerPoint to a video, "Saving Student Brian," filmed partly in Second Life (more about this project). This year we decided to tackle our library tutorial and do something different.

Basically we're taking a series of PowerPoints and video clips and editing them in Camtasia to create a series of videos. How's it going? Ask me again in a week.

New Video Content for Welcoming/Orienting Students
The Hub's video windows are a perfect venue for orienation information, at least for the first few weeks of class before our art exhibits begin. Where are the vending machines? How do I put money on my account for printing? What the heck is a core? It's also a good opportunity to remind students what exactly librarians and IT staff can help with, since we still get that "help with what?" question at our library/IT desk in the Hub. Several of us will be working on this and I hope we'll have the new displays up a week before classes begin.

Speaking Engagements
I was a little crazy busy this spring with a state conference, AISTI, LOEX, and SLA within just a few weeks of each other. That will pick up to a lesser extent this fall as I already have a few things lined up or in the works on various topics: cloud computing, information commons, technology planning, and Second Life.


So that's a little bit of my summer so far and a preview of what's to come. I expect the next few weeks are going to be far from leisurely. Hope everyone out there is having a good summer!

The Hubbub recap, part three

See parts one and two for background.

Staffing is of course the most important thing to make such a large event successful. From the very beginning, we involved as many library staff as possible.

All Library Staff

Once I got approval from administration and set a tentative date with our K Week folks, I sent all library staff a "save the date" and asked for volunteers to help plan. We notified staff as we got closer to the event and encouraged them to volunteer to work at the event as well as to attend. After the event, we sent images and a recap out to all staff via email and through the library staff newsletter. We tried to communicate about the event as much as possible and get everyone involved. I thought it was very important to make it a library-wide event that we could all be proud of--not just a Hub thing or a Young Library thing.

Planning Committee

The Planning Committee was the genius behind the operation. Gail, Debbie, Reinette, and Alice did a fabulous job with brainstorming ideas and putting them into action. It is essential to have a strong committee that can be really "out there" with ideas (some that didn't make the cut this year: a makeover counter, knitting, pony rides, a live band, a Money Machine or dunking booth...and that's just a few). At the same time, that committee has to have follow-through in actually getting these things accomplished--obtaining estimates, making reservations, communicating regularly with vendors, following up as needed. This committee did a stellar job with both.

One of the very time consuming things we did (that Reinette did--thank you!) was contacting local businesses for possible giveaways in our grand prize drawing. She contacted salons, CD shops, gift stores, clothing stores, coffee shops--all kinds of local businesses that might appeal to students--and the response was overwhelming. It was practically a full-time job for a few days as she went around town picking up the various donated items. The students loved the prize drawing at the event--it was definitely a highlight. Even the young man who won a "Pilates Hottie" tank top seemed to be happy.

Volunteers for Decorating

I'd never bought a helium balloon kit so I had no idea how long it would take to blow up all those balloons (50 per kit). Plus I had several thousand feet of streamers and lots of colorful stuff to hang on the walls. I was worried about trying to balance decorating with dealing with the caterers and the other vendors as well as generally preparing for the evening. When I put out the call for volunteers, Mary graciously volunteered the ENTIRE STAFF of Preservation and Digital Programs. She planned to have everyone decorate instead of holding their weekly staff meeting. Wow, I can't begin to describe how helpful that was. Thank you all!

If you are lucky enough to have 14 volunteers to help decorate, it's likely that the decorating will go quickly (and it will be loads of fun).

Volunteers to Work the Hubbub

The event was 6-8 pm so I was a little concerned we might not have enough staff and student employees to cover the event adequately. I also had to factor in all the other activities of the week (many of us were already tired, tired, tired from other K Week and move-in activities). I did my best to make it sound like the best job ever, and thankfully 19 people volunteered.

That was enough to work my plan:

• Three people at the entrance to greet and help with registering for the drawing
• Two people staffing the bellydance area (bellydancing was optional)
• Two people on Pop A Shot Basketball (we ended up needing more since the score mechanism was so lame on the machines)
• Two people to watch the pizza tables (unfortunately food service staff were overwhelmed and the library staff did most of the serving of the pizza--THANK YOU Sherree and Mary!!)
• One person on Pimp My Avatar
• One person on Palm Reading Librarian (Jo could have really used some help as busy as she was though none of us have her awesome skills. Thanks, Jo!)
• One person at the Mac Lab to greet and direct
• One person at the Windows lab to greet and direct
• The rest were to help staff the non-existent video games and float around to answer questions, direct, and trade up with people who wanted to work multiple posts

I did have quite a plan. Looking back at it, it's really kind of scary--a big floor map with names and hash marks and arrows all over the place. If anything, I probably over-planned it but I had no idea what to expect the first go-around.

Clean-Up Crew

One of the things I neglected in all my overplanning was dealing with cleanup. Granted, we have a very fine custodial staff and that technically is their job. There was no way I was going to leave that kind of mess for them though, and I'd been working and communicating with them about the event all along. We were all exhausted, so I sent as many people home as I could. Alice, James, my husband, and I had the fun of fishing ~100 soft drinks out of freezing cold water and ice. Now that's definitely an activity to consider for next year's Hubbub.

Final Thank Yous

You really can't thank people enough. Thanks to everyone who helped in any way with the Hubbub. There are too many to name here but I appreciate all of you. I especially want to thank Alice who works with me at the Hub. I also want to thank Krista, who was our brand-new graduate assistant at the time. Both of them are full of great ideas and initiative, and it's truly a pleasure working with them. I also want to thank the Dean of Libraries who allowed me to do this in the first place (she even worked at the event which is really quite cool).

If you've managed to read through all these credits, let me just add that I'll continue to write about the Hubbub as I think of things that are relevant or might be useful to others. I'll also start documenting the planning of the next one. Right now the event I'm consumed with planning is the Young Library Anniversary Party (and yes, I am actually approaching the student event in the Hub as a real birthday party--cake, hats, balloons, clown, and all). I'll post about that as things become a little more concrete.

More pictures of the Hubbub and other fun things at the Hub are available on flickr.

(Photos by Jacob Davis)

The Hubbub recap continued

Continuing my recap of our first Hubbub experience, I'm next going to share my thoughts on publicity.

Number one, as I mentioned in my earlier post, work with the campus entity that plans the official freshman welcome events. In my case, not only did I get to develop a new relationship with some terrific people on campus, we also got loads of publicity for our event. We were featured on the official schedule of events, and we were specifically mentioned in a number of orientation sessions. The K Week staff used the approach: "Want to bellydance in the library? Then go to the Hubbub party!" Of course they mentioned the free pizza and games and other activities for the shimmy-shy, but the bellydancing really seemed to stick with students. There is no way I could have generated this kind of buzz without the help of the K Week staff.

Since our target audience was freshman students (though any students were welcome, of course), we really couldn't do much advertising on campus until three days before the event. Move-in day was a Friday and our event was on Monday. On that Friday though, we hung a bunch of flyers in student hangouts on campus. The residence halls were covered thankfully as I attended the resident advisor resource fair earlier that week and distributed loads of flyers to the RAs. Many of the RAs were excited about the event (perhaps even a little jealous that we didn't do something like this their freshman year) and I invited them all and encouraged them to invite their advisees.

I also relied on our Hub partners to help spread the word. I really can't say enough nice things about my friends in campus IT. I know I'm lucky in that regard as the library-IT relationship at other schools isn't necessarily as good. The IT folks mentioned the Hubbub at all their orientation events and distributed flyers in the student computing labs. They were also a big help at the actual event (more on that in the future "staffing" post).

As far as electronic means of publicity, we did the standard press release which was posted to the main UK website. Though this probably didn't catch the attention of many students, perhaps it made faculty and staff more aware of the event. Along the same lines, we posted a library news item as well. I worked with our official UK PR contact to distribute the press release. We did in fact have several photographers covering the event as a result of this.

The student newspaper didn't cover the Hubbub, but to my delight, they featured us in a special insert guide for students the following week. When we opened the Hub in the middle of the spring semester, they wrote a very nice piece about the Hub. I wish we'd gotten a little Hubbub mention, but there are so many events going on that week, and the other coverage they've done has been good so I can't complain.

I had used Facebook before for advertising and decided to use it again for the Hubbub. Like any of our other methods though, it was difficult to judge how effective it was. We used Facebook in several ways:

Facebook flyer. This is probably the most common way campus groups advertise on Facebook. Buy a flyer and Facebook displays it to your audience. I'd bought a flyer last year and since then I was pleased to see that you could further tailor your audience. Since I only ran the ad Sat-Mon and didn't buy very many flyers, it was pretty inexpensive.

Facebook event. I created an event in Facebook and then invited my student and UK campus friends, had them invite their friends, and so on. I got a few questions from students as a result, so it was worth doing. In the end, this reached over a hundred people and didn't cost anything.

Facebook groups. K Week had an official group with several hundred student members so I posted to its wall a couple of times. I also posted to the wall of several unofficial student groups (and happened to answer a few questions about the semester schedule, designated safety paths on campus, library hours, campus mailing addresses). This is a little tricky as I imagine it is easy to cross the line from "helpful librarian" to "nosy old person lurking on Facebook." I didn't do very much of this but what little I did seemed appreciated. At least no one wrote anything nasty about me or told me to go away.

What would I have done differently? Next time I'd like to look into those campus "yard signs." Those are a real attention getter in my opinion, but I haven't investigated the cost or if approval is needed (likely) in order to display them on university lawns.

In the next post I'll talk about staffing. The team that makes it all happen is the most important part of throwing an event like this.

UPDATE: Hubbub recap part three

(Photos by Alice Wasielewski)

The Hubbub recap, part one

On Monday, August 20, 2007, we invited all UK freshmen to our information commons, the Hub, for food and fun at The Hubbub. I'm thrilled to report we reached around 400 students in that two hour period.

I began planning in April by getting approval for the event and putting together a workgroup of interested staff to help plan. The five of us met a few times but conducted most of our business via email. I met early on with the head of New Student and Parent Programs, the group that coordinates the official freshman welcome activities. We set a date and time that worked nicely with the rest of the "K Week" schedule. Being part of K Week gave us a great deal of exposure: we were mentioned at a number of orientation sessions, we had easy access to the resident advisors for sharing flyers, plus we were front and center on all the official K Week schedule material in print and online. The people in New Student and Parent Programs were outstanding to work with, and our staff even got cool K Week t-shirts to easily identify us at the Hubbub and other K Week events. Bottom line: it is essential to work your event into the official schedule (Brian from Georgia Tech, home of a particularly outstanding freshman event, agrees).

As far as planning activities, our group had a lot of fun with this. We decided that the sky was the limit and came up with lots of fun, wacky ideas. At one point we considered setting up a makeover counter (I still think this is a good idea). We looked at renting a Money Machine for coupons and prizes but decided it was too expensive and labor-intensive. We considered a live band, but realized this might be a *little* too loud for the rest of the library. I'm envious of the wonderful things they do at Georgia Tech but realized that laser tag might be pushing it a bit for the first event--there's always Hubbub 2008! We settled on video games, Pop A Shot basketball, bellydancing, a Second Life activity, and the Palm Reading Librarian. We also utilized our whiteboards by hosting a Whiteboard Art Contest. Surprisingly the most successful event of the evening was the Palm Reading Librarian though we had a good number of bellydancers, too. Bottom line: it's okay to be far out and creative with your activities. Often those are the most successful.

You may be wondering how a Palm Reading Librarian could possibly be more popular than videogames played on wall projection. Well, the only snag of the entire event was that our video game vendor did not show up. I know. You'd think that we would have had a riot on our hands, but surprisingly, we made it through the evening without too much of a problem. I suppose copious amounts of free pizza can heal all wounds. We had considered having staff bring in video game consoles, but I was really nervous about the possibility of damage. What if someone flings your Wiimote across the room and it hits one of our lovely marble pillars? What if in the chaos of hundreds of students in the basement someone disappears with your Reaper? This was probably me being overly conservative on our first go at the Hubbub, but we all agreed that it was better to get equipment from somewhere. A couple of our video game stores in town bring equipment and games in for demos--they do it for parties, schools, church groups and the like, and were happy to do this for us. We scheduled months in advance, everything seemed to be in order when we checked in with them before the event, but then they failed to show up. The store manager kept assuring us that the staff were "on their way" but they never showed. Possibly they ended up gaming over at one of the frats as it was during Rush week. Bottom line: have more control over your game equipment. I've gone so far as to submit a proposal to purchase a few consoles for the library. Students could bring in games for a game night once or twice each semester.

Next post, I'll talk about publicity.

UPDATE: Hubbub recap part two

UPDATE: Hubbub recap part three

(Photos by Jacob Davis)