Legal Research

Harvard Law School During National Library Week

By Connie Crosby

Last week was National Library Week in the U.S., sponsored by the American Library Association as a way to promote libraries. In Friday’s Law Librarian Conversations podcast  (formerly the Law Librarian podcast) we talked about the up-take of this week by academic law libraries, especially considering that the focus tends to be on public libraries. One library in particular stood out: Harvard Law School Library.

According to the Et Seq. – Harvard Law School Library Blog post by Meg Kribble, the following “fun and games” were used to promote the library during National Library Week:

• Foursquare: awarding a $25 Harvard Book Store gift card to the HLS student who was mayor of the HLS Library (i.e. had the most visits) on the geo-location game/communication app Foursquare at 4:00pm on Saturday April 17 (see Harvard Law School Library on Foursquare).
• Facebook: telling a lawyer joke on Harvard Law School Library’s Facebook page that garnered the most approval (i.e. marked with the most “likes”) also received a $25 Harvard Book Store gift card.
• Find the Gnome scavenger hunt: each day during the week they had a short scavenger hunt for “Mr. Gnome” hidden somewhere in the library.  Clues were given out, and on the trail students were reminded of library tips, shown new tools, and shown interesting features of the building. The prize for finding Mr. Gnome was a $10 coffee gift card each day.

I notice they included a note about Foursquare, encouraging students to take care when and where they publicly sign in for their own safety. There has been some talk in the biblioblawgosphere (the law library blog universe) about the wisdom of encouraging students to check in on Foursquare from the library, citing student privacy and safety as the concern.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 19, 2010 (boomark / email).