april08b.indd


Jon Bodnar, Alison Valk, and Brian Mathews 

Challenging
your
students


Using
a
contest
to
promote
the
library



Many academic libraries now offer more than just a quiet place to study and ac­
cess information. They offer students a suite 
of computing, programming, and design 
resources. However, because students rarely 
associate these tools with the traditional aca­
demic library, many of them remain unaware 
of what the library has to offer. As more librar­
ies provide support for student collaboration, 
computing, and creativity, they must fi nd new 
ways to tell students about their resources 
and to create opportunities for students to 
use them. 

Contests are an effective way for libraries 
to increase student awareness. A successful 
contest provides students with an interactive, 
competitive experience through which they 
can discover—or possibly rediscover—the 
importance of their campus library. 

Designing a multimedia contest 
In the fall semester of 2007, the Georgia Tech 
Library launched its multimedia contest “Flash 
in the Pan.” This contest invited participants 
to create a short animated clip on a theme of 
their choosing using Adobe Flash and related 
programs.1 

“Flash in the Pan” offered students an op­
portunity to explore the library’s multimedia 
studio resources. Those resources included 
an array of software programs, training 
workshops, and personalized assistance, as 
well as the library’s collection of print and 
electronic technical books and self­paced 
DVD tutorials. 

“Flash in the Pan” also allowed Georgia 
Tech students to increase their understand­
ing of the importance of the library to their 

academic and creative achievements. By high­
lighting the multimedia resources, the contest 
increased student awareness of the library’s 
wide range of services and applications and 
enabled them to see the library as a multifac­
eted learning environment. Ultimately, “Flash 
in the Pan” inspired students to learn new 
technologies and allowed the library to secure 
its place on campus as a meeting ground for 
the exploration of new ideas. 

Key points for launching a contest 
Developing, implementing, and running a 
successful library contest is difficult. The best 
advice is to take your time and to plan care­
fully. If you are considering running a contest, 
here are a few important points to consider. 

• Establish clear goals and expectations. 
Every long­term project benefits from having 
clear goals and expectations. Designing and 
implementing a contest is no different. Defi ne 
your goals and expectations at the beginning 
of your project, and keep an easily accessible 
record of them along with a project timeline, 
task list, and list of important milestones. Hav­
ing ready access to this information will ensure 
that everyone knows what needs to be done 
and who is responsible. 

• Ask people outside of your department for 
advice. Librarians and library staff know who 
is responsible for providing specifi c services, 

Jon Bodnar is reference and subject librarian, e-mail: jon. 
bodnar@library.gatech.edu, Alison Valk is information 
associate, e-mail: alison.valk@library.gatech.edu, and 
Brian Mathews is reference and subject librarian, e-
mail: brian.mathews@library.gatech.edu, at Georgia 
Tech Library. 
© 2008 Jon Bodnar, Alison Valk, and Brian Mathews 

212C&RL News April 2008

mailto:brian.mathews@library.gatech.edu
mailto:alison.valk@library.gatech.edu
mailto:bodnar@library.gatech.edu


but students do not know about the behind­
the­scenes division of labor. They see the 
library as one building offering a number of 
services. Use this as a opportunity to talk to 
people outside of your department about your 
contest. Ask them for advice and for sugges­
tions for improvement. Their input will offer 
you a new perspective on your contest, help 
you to align your contest with the overarch­
ing goals of the library, and help you to make 
your contest more understandable and inviting 
to the students. 

• Network and promote. A successful con­
test creates opportunities for you to connect 
with students. Actively seek new opportunities 
to communicate with small groups of students 
who may be interested in the contest and in 
the library resources associated with it. Also, 
remember that communicating with these 
students is not a one­time deal. Reach out to 
them in a variety of ways and at different times 
during the life of the contest. 

There are many ways to communicate with 
students. Here are a few things to explore: 

• Student newspaper 
• Posters (inside and outside of the li­

brary) 
• Departmental mailing lists (both faculty 

lists and student lists) 
• Faculty contacts (especially in depart­

ments whose students are heavy users of the 
library resources related to the contest) 

• Library homepage 
• Blogs 
• Word­of­mouth campaigns 
• Flyers/handouts 
• Facebook 
• Student computer labs (inside and out­

side of the library) 
• Web site created for your contest 

• Creatively engage students. One goal 
of a library contest is to engage the students 
creatively, so feel free to design a contest 
that requires that they devote some time and 
energy to fulfilling its entry requirements. If 
they are successful in achieving the creative 
goals that they set for themselves while par­
ticipating in your contest, they will associate 

that success with the library. They will also 
better understand the benefit that the library 
is to them. 

Engaging students through a library contest 
is a matter of finding the right balance between 
two concerns. First, you must ask students to 
do something that is in line with the educa­
tional mission of your college or university and 
the type of work that students often do on your 
campus. This will ensure that students have the 
skills that are necessary to participate in your 
contest. Second, you must also ask students to 
do something that is sufficiently different from 
the work that they do in their classes on a daily 
basis so that they will not view participation 
in your contest as “just another class project” 
or “just more work to do.” 

• Make the contest attractive to students. 
The more attractive your contest is to students, 
the more likely they will be to enter it. Here 
are two suggestions to help you increase the 
attractiveness of your contest to students. 

­ Use high­profile people as judges or 
spokespersons for your contest. Find out who 
students respect and aspire to be like, and 
ask them if they are willing to participate in 
your contest or if they are willing to make an 
appearance in support of it. This will increase 
student interest and raise their competitive 
spirits. 

­ Offer a great prize. Students will not enter 
your contest if they do not think that its grand 
prize is worth the effort it takes to win it, so 
take the time to discover what students really 
want, and find a way to offer it as a prize 
for your contest. Additionally, if your contest 
targets students with specific abilities, make 
sure that your prize is attractive to students 
who have that particular skill set. 

Conclusion 
Library contests are relatively commonplace. 
However, some contests are more success­
ful than others. Awarding a prize to students 
simply for writing a good paper limits your 
potential to introduce them to the wide range 
of resources that your library provides. Be 

(continues on page 229) 

April 2008  213 C&RL News 



to the meeting with Leshner, as discussed 
above. Finally, a week or two after the Leshner 
meeting, ICOLC concluded its deliberations 
with the endorsement of the resolution by 
62­library consortia. These cascading events, 
nicely interspersed by two­to­four weeks, 
were critical in building advocacy and vis­
ibility, but the timing was unplanned and 
just plain lucky. 

Courageous leadership 
I want to offer sincere and genuine recogni­
tion of the courageous leadership shown by 
Alan Leshner in this process. It is to Leshner’s 
great credit that he was willing to reconsider a 
decision that he had supported and endorsed. 
As an administrator and leader, it is easy to 
become personally invested in decisions. 
However, upon hearing the voices and con­
cerns of the library community (and, I believe, 
some of his membership representatives) it is a 
measure of Leshner’s leadership and adminis­
trative courage that he did not react stubbornly 
and defensively. Rather, he reconsidered, initi­
ated a reopening of discussions with JSTOR, 
and after renegotiations, reversed the original 

decision. He deserves recognition as well as 
our admiration and thanks. 

Conclusion 
On the basis my experience, the successful 
advocacy effort with AAAS depended on 
commonality of values, personal commitment 
to the issue, reaching the AAAS membership, 
luck, and leadership. These factors led to the 
reversal of the decision to cease contributing 
new content from its premier journal, Science, 
to the JSTOR platform. Clearly, some of these 
characteristics are unique to the AAAS/JSTOR 
issue. It is interesting to think which factors 
could be applied—and which factors would 
be new—in a similar effort with a different 
nonprofit organization, such as the American 
Psychological Association, or even a for­profi t 
publisher. The lessons of this initiative are 
useful and worth the careful consideration of 
the library community. 

But in conclusion the final word must be 
this: after years of outrageous pricing schemes, 
intractable usage policies, infl exible licensing 
schemes, and Machiavellian mergers and con­
solidations, it was good to win one. 

(“MLibrary2.0,” continued from page 206) 
think more openly and broadly about how 
users and staff work and encouraged think­
ing on a large scale about delivery of content 
and services. It has prompted us as a com­
munity to try new things and to see new 
possibilities. What’s next? We don’t know. 
We have only begun to create, share, and 
network!6 

Notes 
1. MLibrary 2.0 promotional Web site, 

www.lib.umich.edu/lib20/. 
2. Flickr and Facebook groups to en­

courage sharing and networking, fl ickr.com 

/groups/mlibrary2_0/ and umichigan. 
facebook.com/group.php?gid=2825620230. 

3. Aggregated RSS feed, www.lib.umich. 
edu/lib20/uberfeed.html. 

4. “Pre­Shelf Life of Library Materials,” 
www.flickr.com/photos/alexis_medea 
/sets/72157601347637401/. 

5. Google Maps/Flickr mashup, www.lib. 
umich.edu/labs/maps/index.html. 

6. Thanks to the task force members: Laurie 
Alexander (co­chair), Dave Carter (co­chair), 
Suzanne Chapman, Robyn Cleveland, Bill 
Dueber, Jake Glenn, Kat Hagedorn, Donna 
Hayward, Susan Hollar, Scott Martin, and Julie 
Weatherbee. 

(“Challenging your students,” continued from Note 
page 213) 1. Visit weblog.library.gatech.edu/news 
creative. Develop a contest that encourages /2007/12/11/fl ash­in­the­pan­winner/ to see 
student creativity and that benefits your library Georgia Tech Library’s Flash in the Pan 2007 
to the greatest extent possible. winner. 

April 2008  229 C&RL News 

www.flickr.com/photos/alexis_medea
www.lib.umich
http:ickr.com
www.lib.umich.edu/lib20