Meet our Library Treasure Hunt champions
Stanford Libraries hosted a Treasure Hunt event during the first weeks of the quarter that encouraged participants to explore the amazing resources available through our many branch locations. Participants visited nine library physical and digital spaces to find the answers to a survey of visit-related questions. Each response earned the participant points towards a series of four grand prizes from the University Bookstore. Everyone who completed at least a branch survey became eligible to win grand prizes and some participants racked up even more points from questions in the bonus section. Out of the dedicated pool of participants that engaged with five or more branches, we met up with the four participants who earned the top scores to present their University Bookstore grand prize.
We were ecstatic to present the Stanford University Padfoilo to Julie Weitzman at her favorite branch location – the Branner Earth Science Library! Julie manages an isotope laboratory in the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford. She joined our community in January and appreciated that the Library Treasure Hunt encouraged her to discover the libraries here at Stanford. She smashed the competition by completing 100% of the Treasure Hunt branch and bonus point challenges – a perfect score by our first-place winner!
Claudia Zhang took second place by storm by completing all branch location challenges! She is a first-year graduate student in Chemistry, and we caught up with her to present the canvas tote bag at her favorite library, the Li & Ma Science Library in the Sapp Center. Claudia shared that she really likes to explore, and probably would have found the libraries anyways, but that the Treasure Hunt was a fun way to interact with these spaces and librarians around the Stanford campus.
Representing the 8% of undergraduate student participants, we congratulated Colin Liu on placing third in our grand prize contest. Colin engaged with all the branch challenges except for Green Library’s questionnaire. In a twist of irony, we learned that Green Library is actually Colin’s favorite library. Despite having visited the Li & Ma Science Library many times, Colin says that the Treasure Hunt led him to discover a second floor of materials in this library! Colin also learned that contacting librarians through our website is very easy, and we look forward to hearing from him (and you) in the future.
Our fourth-place grand prize winner completed five branches and stood out from other competitors for this prize by picking up a few bonus points. We were excited to meet up with Nandagopal Pradeep Kumar (Nandu), a graduate student studying Material Science, at his newly discovered favorite library – the Branner Earth Sciences Library! Nandu spoke very highly of the Library Open House events, where he discovered new book collections, spaces, librarians and fun activities at each unique location. The Treasure Hunt helped Nandu discover that many resources are also highlighted on branch webpages, and he mentioned it was a great way to connect with the SearchWorks catalog.
What a close race this was, and we couldn’t be happier that participants had fun while learning about their libraries! We want to send a big appreciation to everyone who participated, making this year’s Library Treasure Hunt a success! We hope you continue exploring our branches and discovering the vast troves of resource “treasures” that Stanford Libraries offers online and in house.