Stay Fresh at Roesch

In an earlier post I described how I tracked what students said about the library on Twitter. Not only does it give me some good feedback to share with the rest of the staff (slow Internet, it's too warm in here, etc.) certain tweets inspired our theme for finals week: Stay Fresh at Roesch.

Two students tweeted about #RoeschBreath which they explained was the way your breath smells after spending too much time in the library (smells like musty books!) One of the students kindly edited our "Top Ten Reasons to Visit" brochure by crossing out 10 and replacing it with 11 - Roesch Breath being the 11th reason. Even though this was only two students who had their own inside joke I knew we could use it to turn it into something clever: they had to know we want to hear about their experiences at the library.

So, I came up with the slogan "Stay Fresh at Roesch" while the Dean had the idea to put the slogan on mint candies and have them out during finals (we ordered 4,000 mint candies from a local vendor). The Marketing and Outreach Team that I chair took the theme and ran with it: one member found the perfect font and images that come across as retro, fun, and quirky. Others organized the actual finals event services: free pizza, coffee, chair massages, and taxi rides to the student neighborhoods.

This morning I had help distributing the mints to the upper floors and students are already tweeting about the theme and the mints. One of the first students to notice was a student who originally tweeted about Roesch Breath:

Student: Love that #ClubRoesch offerers mints to prevent #RoeschBreath##StayfreshatRoesch

RoeschLibrary: So glad you noticed! We got the mints because of your#RoeschBreath tweets and we saw the Top "11" Reasons to Visit brochure :)

Student: @roeschlibrary I'm so happy someone read it! I was upset when it wasn't there upon my next adventure at #ClubRoesch!#AlwaysFresh

RoeschLibrary: Oh, sorry! I took it so I could show all the other staff members - you are so funny! Let me know if you want it back :)

I plan on taking pictures of students throughout finals week with the mints (if they last!) and uploading them to a Facebook album. Since the concept came from the students I'd like to keep them involved as much as possible. I went up to each group that had a bowl of mints and asked them what they thought, if I could take their picture, and told them they'd be library celebrities on the Facebook.com. I hope this interaction in person and on Twitter shows students that someone is listening. I think a lot of them are really clever and have funny AND important things to say!

'Til next time: Stay fresh at Roesch!