Librarians’ Guide to Introducing the Sparky Awards on Your Campus

Active support from college and research libraries is at the center of the Sparky awards’ success. The contest is a great way to start or continue a conversation with students, teachers, researchers, and administration on several library issues – including:

• Copyright
• Fair use
• Ethics
• Resource costs
• Sharing
• New forms of scholarly publishing
• and more

Here are a few ways to use the 2009 Sparky Awards to support your library programs:

• Offer your own recognition, prizes, and Web posting of Sparky entries to create local excitement and engagement around the contest
• Convene one or more training sessions focused on the Sparky Awards by introducing mash-up techniques and short-movie creation
• Hang a poster in your digital or multimedia lab
• Point teaching faculty to the Sparky Educators’ Guide to give them an idea on how to shake up fall curricula
• Introduce at freshman library orientation
• Incorporate the announcement into classes or workshops
• Post Sparky ads on your library Web pages
• Share videos about the contest, including the 2007 and 2008 winning entries and the 2008 promo

To suggest other ideas, please contact us.

Jennifer McLennan SPARC Director of Communications jennifer [at] arl [dot] org