C&RL News March 2020 130

Salisbury University (SU) Libraries has a visitor who comes at the end of every 
semester, staying for approximately one 
week. Her name is familiar to the students, 
and her arrival is heralded on social media 
and via posters around campus. She is the 
Finals Fairy. She serves many purposes, but 
her primary function is to provide stress 
relief to students in the midst of their fi-
nals. Susan Brazer first came up with the 
idea in the fall 2011, and SU Libraries has 
continued with her every fall and spring 
semester since.

In 2011 National Public Radio (NPR) ran 
a news story about an artist in Scotland 
who had started a massive “hide-and-seek” 
game, using her book-themed art left at 
various places around Edinburgh along 
with a clue giving seekers an idea of where 
the next prize would be found.1 That news 
story sparked the idea of SU Libraries try-
ing something similar, albeit significantly 
smaller in scale. With a budget well under 
$100, it was organized and implemented 
less than 24 hours later. Due to the short 
turn-around time and small budget, dollar 
store prizes, including plastic toys and 
candy, made up the bulk of the prizes, 
and the grand prize was a $15 Chipotle 
gift card. The first prizes were hidden in 
the library building, and clues were sent 
out via social media. 

However despite all hopes, students 
either weren’t interested or didn’t under-
stand how Finals Fairy, named purely for 
whimsical alliterative reasons, worked. 

The first few prizes were left on the shelf, 
unclaimed and unwanted. Library col-
leagues took it on themselves to send out 
a few faux-tweets on their personal Twitter 
accounts claiming to have found prizes, 
and expressing their excitement that the 
library was hiding free and fun prizes for 
anyone who was studying in the library. 
Those few encouraging tweets were all 
it took, and less than 12 hours later, the 
students had fully grasped the concept of 
the Finals Fairy, and the race was off to 
see which studying undergraduate could 
find the prizes first. It is a program that 
continues eight years later. 

Currently, volunteers are requested and 
sourced from the entire library staff via an 
email call for participation. Research and 
instructional librarians participate most 
regularly, but volunteers range from the 
technology librarian, to the local history 
archivist, to the libraries’ executive ad-
ministrative assistant. Student workers are 
drafted from the circulation desk to help 
with hiding prizes on the weekends, when 
no librarians are present. The committee 
is formed newly each semester to design 
and approve posters with the University 

Angeline Prichard and Susan Brazer

Finding the Finals Fairy
Outreach and stress release during finals

Angeline Prichard is a research and instructional 
librarian and RIS department chair, email: arprichard@
salisbury.edu, and Susan Brazer is science research 
and instruction librarian, as well as the open resources 
and data management coordinator, email: sebrazer@
salisbury.edu, at Salisbury University Libraries

© 2020 Angeline Prichard and Susan Brazer

mailto:arprichard%40salisbury.edu?subject=
mailto:arprichard%40salisbury.edu?subject=
mailto:sebrazer%40salisbury.edu?subject=
mailto:sebrazer%40salisbury.edu?subject=


March 2020 131 C&RL News

Publications office, review the prize-
hiding schedule, and purchase prizes 
themselves. 

Over the history of SU’s Finals Fairy, 
the budget has varied widely, and the 
committee has found that it is an easily 
scalable process in either direction. Prizes 
can be free library merchandise or donated 
materials from local businesses if the bud-
get demands or can also extend to larger 
grand prizes. In a recent budget cycle, the 
dean provided $300 per semester for the 
initiative, paying for both advertising and 
prizes. More specifically, that breakdown 
was as follows:

In the early Finals Fairy days, the 
c o m m i t t e e  d i d 
n o t  h a v e  a n y 
formal means of 
p r o m o t i n g  t h e 
event, nor was 
there a budget 
that truly allowed 
f o r  s l i c k  p r o -
motional items. 
The committee 
b e g a n  s i m p l y , 
w i t h  b a s i c  s o -
cial media posts 
announcing the 
Finals Fairy’s ar-
rival, and used 
hand-drawn rep-
resentations of 
the Finals Fairy 
all around cam-
pus—including 
chalk drawings 
on campus side-

walks and at the Research Help Desk. 
In subsequent years, the committee ex-
panded promotional efforts to include 
posters spread across campus created by 
the in-house Publications Department, 
and a social media campaign with themed 
countdowns bringing extra attention to 
outreach efforts. 

Th e Finals Fairy organizers have 
found that, even with more money, silly 
discount store prizes are still appealing 
to students, especially when paired with 
a gift card to a local cafe or restaurant. 
Examples of prizes from previous years 
are coloring books, temporary tattoos, 
light-up balls, encapsulated sponges in 
the shape of dinosaurs that expand in 
water, a hula hoop, and a model airplane. 
All of those prizes were under $3 apiece. 
The semester grand prize has varied, but 
tends toward an e-reader, streaming de-
vice, or streaming platform gift card—all 
of these options are under $100. 

In order to make sense of the chaos 
of organizing so many small items, the 
committee uses a spreadsheet listing 

the three time 
s l o t s  f o r  e a c h 
day of finals, in 
w h i c h  v o l u n -
teers sign up for 
the prizes they 
will be respon-
s i b l e  f o r  h i d -
ing. The prizes 
themselves are 
l a i d  o u t  o n  a 
t a b l e  b y  t i m e 
slot. Committee 
members collect 
the prizes they 
will be hiding 
t o  b r i n g  b a c k 
t o  t h e i r  o w n 
w o r k s p a c e s , 
thus diversify-
ing wher e the 
p r i z e s  c o m e 
f r o m  a n d  r e -

When the Finals Fairy initiative first started, simple chalk-
paint drawings such as this one served as the main form 
of advertisement.

Advertising posters $60

Grand prize | Kindle paper white $80

Dollar Store prizes $50

Starbucks gift cards | 13 @ $5 $65

Chipotle gift cards | 4 at $10 $40

Weekend candy | 4 bars $5

Total $300



C&RL News March 2020 132

ducing notice from students. Over the 
weekends, a variety of themed prizes 
have been explored, including caffein-
ated drinks, vitamin-boosted water, and 
candy. 

When hiding the prizes, volunteers 
must take a picture of the item in situ 
with a clue, as stealthily as possible. 
This is then cross posted to the library’s 
Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook ac-
counts. Ultimate-
l y ,  t h e  h o p e  i s 
that while the pri-
mary purpose is 
to help students 
d e s t r e s s  d u r i n g 
the most stressful 
time of their se-
mester, searching 
for clues will also 
help familiarize 
them with areas 
o f  t h e  b u i l d i n g 
with which they 
a r e  l e s s  a c c u s -
t o m e d .  A l o n g 
with each prize, 
two small sheets 
of paper are hid-
d e n .  O n e  s a y s 
“You Found Me” 
with information 
about the #finals-
fairy hashtag and SU Libraries’ social me-
dia accounts. This encourages students 
to reply to the library via social media 
that they have found the prize. Not only 
does that indicate to any students who 
stumble onto the post later to see that a 
prize has been found, but it also encour-
ages friendly interactions between the 
library and the students on social media. 
The second paper left with the prize sig-
nals to anyone who is searching that the 
prize has already been found but more 
are on the way.

Organizers wanted a little more con-
trol over the grand prize due to its mon-
etary value. As such, each year a winning 

ticket is hidden in place of the prize 
itself. This ticket must be brought to the 
library service desk, where a committee 
member is waiting, to be exchanged for 
the prize. To create a little continuity 
between semesters, this ticket is always 
hidden in the same way. The winning 
ticket is hidden inside of one book. This 
book is placed in a stack of several other 
books, and a photo is taken showing 

all of the spines. 
T h e  c a p t i o n 
used in the final 
prize social me-
dia posting is a 
clue referencing 
w h i c h  b o o k  i n 
the stack has the 
slip in it—“Can 
you dig up the 
right book?”—in 
reference to an 
archaeology text, 
for instance. 

E a c h  y e a r , 
once the social 
media post goes 
l i v e ,  m u l t i p l e 
students can be 
s e e n  r u n n i n g 
about the build-
i n g ,  t r y i n g  t o 
figure out how 

to track down the correct call number 
and be the first to discover the winning 
ticket.

 Even with the excitement of the grand 
prize search, students have remained re-
spectful of their fellow students who are 
studying. The libraries have received no 
complaints about noise or disruption for 
any Finals Fairy-related searching.

Overall, things have run relatively 
smoothly with implementing the Finals 
Fairy, but there have been obstacles 
along the way. Each semester there are 
always a few students who are repeat 
finders. While this did not present a 
problem for the smaller prizes, the com-

Finals Fairy gifts, such as this “Butterfly Helicopter” and 
Slinky, are tucked away in various places of the Guerrieri 
Academic Commons for students to hunt for during their 
final exam studies.



March 2020 133 C&RL News

“You Found Me!” slips are included with each prize.  Match-
ing “Too Late!” slips are positioned underneath each gift to 
be left behind.

mittee was dismayed to discover that 
twice the same student found the grand 
prize in back-to-back semesters. 

To limit this, advertisements and the 
social media post announcing the grand 
prize now include a note that previous 
grand prize winners are not eligible for 
subsequent grand prizes. Organizers 
also keep a running list of grand prize 
winners to reference when a grand prize 
winner presents 
t h e  w i n n i n g 
ticket. 

Additionally, 
there have been 
times when stu-
dents have fol-
l o w e d  a  s t a f f 
me mber  w hi l e 
a  p r i z e  i s  b e -
ing hidden. This 
has resulted in 
a prize, partic-
ularly a grand 
p r i z e ,  w h i c h 
has needed to 
be re-hidden. If 
the committee 
makeup can be 
varied from semester to semester, this 
would help eliminate much of that prob-
lem. If not, removing the prizes from be-
ing stored in a central public location has 
certainly decreased the students’ ability 
to track staff members hiding habits. 

L i b r a r y  s t u d e n t  e m p l o y e e s  m i g h t 
also be used in hiding prizes to reduce 
students’ abilities to track those hiding. 
Likewise, willing student employees 
might be used in the initial launch of 
a Finals Fairy program to get it off the 
ground by “finding” the first prize(s) 
and announcing it via their own social 
media accounts.

Overall, the Finals Fairy program has 
been an extremely rewarding outreach 
endeavor. Undertaken with a small amount 
of funding and staff, this is a program that 
can be easily started, easily funded, and 

scaled up as budget or institution permits. 
SU Libraries’ program started with dona-
tions from local businesses and a $15 grand 
prize, but has been scaled up to include 
prizes hidden three times a day, gift cards, 
and a grand prize that hovers just under 
the $100 mark. 

In the event of a budget increase, orga-
nizers have discussed designing and or-
dering customized Finals Fairy swag, like 

branded pens, 
mugs, t-shirts, 
and drawstring 
b a c k p a c k s . 
Even with only 
a few items to 
h i d e ,  s t u d e n t s 
were excited by 
the libraries’ ef-
f o r t s  t o  r e a c h 
out and support 
them in a stress-
ful time. 

T h e  p r i z -
e s  t h e m s e l v e s 
didn’t seem to 
actually matter 
in the long run, 
but were a won-

derful avenue with which to reach out 
to and support hard-working students as 
they spent their long hours in the library 
studying for final exams. 

While it does not need to be a fairy 
that visits your campus, does not require 
a grand prize, and can contain as many 
or as few cheap prizes as are deemed 
suitable, a similar outreach and support 
mission targeted towards students dur-
ing their high-stress times would surely 
be as rewarding as the Finals Fairy is at 
Salisbury University.

Note
1. Robert Krulwich, “Who Left a Tree, 

Then a Coffin in the Library?” NPR, October 
31, 2011, https://www.npr.org/sections 
/krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-
left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-library. 

https://www.npr.org/sections /krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-lib
https://www.npr.org/sections /krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-lib
https://www.npr.org/sections /krulwich/2011/10/28/141795907/who-left-a-tree-then-a-coffin-in-the-lib