This article is more than 5 years old.

Project Launch is a year-long enrichment program in partnership with Paisley Magnet School. A culminating session includes a visit to Wake Forest. This year the campus tour was scheduled for Friday, April 27. In setting up the library tour, the coordinator asked if we could arrange to do a little activity with the Project Launch students before we did the tour. The coordinator had planned to do a campus event with the students. Unfortunately, this did not work out so they needed an activity that the students could do inside the library. With this challenge, Roz, Hu, and Bobbie met and decided that we would do a PowerPoint session using the clickers.

The PowerPoint session included some questions about the history of Wake Forest including: when was Wake Forest founded; who was the first president of Wake Forest, and when did the university move to Winston-Salem. Hu led the clicker presentation. Our visitors had a look of surprise and delight on their faces as they responded to the questions and laughter filled the auditorium when answers were revealed. Additionally, we asked a couple of questions about how they do research. One slide set up the following scenario: Your teacher assigns you a report on a person you know nothing about. What is your first step?) Student responses revealed that 42 of the students reported using a search engine (Google) while none reported using Wikipedia, and only 4 reported visiting a library. Another slide asked students what they thought of when they thought of a library. Sixty-five percent said “books” while the other 35% were divided evenly between “movies”, “computers”, “librarians” and “ebooks”.

Following the presentation, the group was divided into five smaller groups for the library tour. The library tour included quick stops at Special Collections, Government Documents/Microtext, Reference, Circulation, and the Bridge. Thanks to the following tour leaders: Ellen D., Sarah, Hu, Carolyn, and Chris. Also thanks to our ambassadors who were stationed at different service/collection points in the library and provided information about their areas: Megan, Barry, Travis, Kaeley, and Rachel Weaver from The Bridge. Many thanks to all who made this year’s event a success! The tour leaders would also like to thank Bobbie Collins for all her work in organizing the program!

an article by Bobbie Collins and Hu Womack (mostly by Bobbie Collins and posted by Hu Womack)