This week, to mark the Lovestruck celebration that is Valentine’s Day, we asked our users to tell us… Is This Love?
They were invited to write a love note to share their admiration/love/affection for the library on one of our specially designed postcards, and add it to our display in the Billy B. And, well…what can we say? We Found Love!
Continue reading “Love is in the Air: Love notes to your Library”
This week we’re introducing you to a historic magazine for Durham University students, which we hold in our archives and special collections.
The Sphinx was a magazine produced by the students of Durham University between March 1905 and June 1922 (it did not appear between July 1914 and the end of 1918). It contained short pieces, parodies, cartoons and accounts of sports and other social events.
The image below shows a view that hasn’t perhaps changed much over the last century or so! Right-click and save the image, or download a PDF version to colour in at your leisure. Why not share your efforts with us via Twitter (@dulib or @PalaceGreenLib)?
If students were brave enough make it past the terrifying dragons we had set up in the library during induction week, they may have experienced the library’s first foray into UX research. UX stands for User Experience, and in a library context it basically means that users are put at the centre of all our decision-making, from the big to the small. UX research puts an emphasis on using creative and intuitive methods with participants, rather than standard surveys that can be uninspiring, boring, and often cannot get to the heart of how users feel, as well as what they think.
We wanted to find out what new students felt as soon as they walked into the library, and whether the expectations of returning and postgraduate students were being met, so induction week felt like the perfect time to conduct our research.
Continue reading “The Bill Bryson Library’s First Steps into UX”
Encouraging new students to visit the library during induction week can be a tricky business. Perhaps unsurprisingly, in a week where they are not only having the academic aspect of their next 3 or 4 years mapped out to them, are being invited to join team, clubs and societies and indulge in half price pizzas and 2-for-1 “quaddy voddies”, new students might find that ‘pop into the library to have a look around and to pick a pencil and a book-shaped eraser’ slips quite far down their agenda.
Although we’re not strictly competing for attention with University Cheese Society or “slammer’s night” at the local champagne bar, it is important to get students into the library early on in their university lives so that we can:
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