Refreshing The Library Scavenger Hunt With Free Tech Tools

Abstract

Student feedback demonstrated to Maritime College library faculty that familiarity and comfort with the library’s space and services severely deteriorated during the pandemic. Students lacked familiarity with group and individual study spaces in the library, types of materials available, and library support services. Library anxiety and antiquated stereotypes of what a library is proved to be barriers to students from fully taking advantage of what the library offers. For the current academic year, the librarians reinvented the pre-pandemic library scavenger hunt in the library orientation session attended by all LEAD 101 courses, a required freshman seminar class for first semester students. This image-based scavenger hunt utilized free tools from Padlet and Canva to make the scavenger hunt a fun group-based activity. It also simplified the workflow and labor on the librarians, which was critical in an understaffed environment. In this session, participants will see the components of the scavenger hunt as well as hear about challenges and successes.