WOW week!

Next week is WOW week at Durham University. Which stands for ‘Welcome and Orientation Week’. Which actually means it should just be ‘WOW’ not ‘WOW week’ and that second week is redundant. Like saying ‘PIN number’ or ‘ISBN number’ (a particular annoyance for librarians) where the words number are in fact repeating the last letter of the acronym, effectively…but ‘WOW week’ sounds great so let’s just forget it and move on!

Every year we look to theme our inductions to make them fun. Previous themes have included Harry Potter, Roald Dahl, pirates and myths and legends, amongst others. And our theme this year is ‘Grow with Us’, encouraging students to see how their skills grow and develop over the years they are with us at Durham – University Library and Collections are not just for WOW week!

To symbolise our theme of growth, we will be giving away seeds that can be planted outside the library (or indeed, anywhere else!) that our users can (hopefully) see grow and blossom in the future. We’ll also be giving away some other freebies and there’ll be an origami ‘Grow With Us’ flower wall – made from recycled books! Naturally, there’ll be an introduction to our services, staff and facilities. A series of QR codes have been set up in various places to allow our users to find out the key information of their choosing.

It should be good fun! And there’s more about WOW week and an introduction for new users via our Welcome and Getting Started with the Library guides.