Induction Innovations at the Music Library

This year the Music Library adopted a number of good practice examples for their annual Library & IT Induction. From Scott Stone (a Performing Arts Research Librarian in California) came the idea to provide context for key library skills by giving a live recital. From Subject Librarians in the Cardiff University College of Biomedical and Life Sciences came the idea of seeing everyone together in a large group and then splitting them into smaller groups that hop from mini-session to mini-session. From Leeds University came the idea of offering a prize draw for everyone who attends. The Music Library then added some of its own unique twists—a ‘Pub style’ quiz (including sweet tins for the top 5 teams) and simple attendance slips that got rubber stamped at each mini-session before going into the prize draw.

Photos with captions below.

Music students looking through the Recital programme before the start of the Induction.

Subject Librarian, Charity Dove, and Music PGT Student, Matthew Poad performing works by Mozart, Ravel, Stravinsky and Weill.

After the recital, Charity gave a presentation on how she found the necessary materials for the performance and programme. This included identifying and selecting appropriate score editions, accessing books for text translations and programme information in the Music Library, online and in other University Libraries, and using the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as well as composers’ thematic catalogues to find individual pieces within the Music Library’s collected editions.

The students were split into three groups to move between three mini-sessions: a Music Library tour, an IT induction (including using Mac computers, network storage and saving files as a PDF), and a University software session (including using the Portal, Learning Central, the new Subject Resources page, Music top tips for Library Search, managing personal Library accounts and using Article Search). 

 

Final Year UG Music Student, Jordan Nicholls, helped lead one of the groups to their different destinations and rubber-stamped their attendance/ prize-draw slips. 

 

Final Year UG Music Student, Cath Mainwaring (another Induction guide) brought homemade brownies for the students to help promote the new Music Library Cakes recipe book that she’s organising as a charity fundraiser this year. 

 

The final verdict was that the new format was more fun for the students, and less stress for the staff—a great success all around!