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First-Year Seminars: Resources for Instructors & Peer Advisors: Mystery Activity

Armacost Library Mystery Activity

The Armacost Library Mystery Activity is an orientation activity designed for first-year students to orient themselves to the library and learn key library skills.

In this activity, students take on the role of an investigator solving a supernatural mystery in the library and retrace the steps of a researcher. As they uncover the mystery, students will:

  • Engage with library services (like course reserves)
  • Learn how to search the catalog
  • Find books on the shelves
  • Become more comfortable using the library

This activity will take approximately 40 minutes to complete. 

There are two options for completing this activity:

  1. Students can complete this activity in their own time outside of class, or
  2. An entire class can complete this activity in groups of 3-4 students during class time.
    • A librarian will introduce and facilitate a short discussion after the activity. 

Each option of the activity will see students complete the same tasks in the same sequence, but the in-class version has multiple routes to prevent each group of students from following each other. For example, each route sees students begin with finding a bound periodical, but each version has them find a different title in different sections. 

Overview

This is a brief overview of the steps students will take to complete this activity. Students completing this in-class will go through these same steps with the addition of checking in with the whole class and a discussion at the end of the activity.

  • Students begin by checking in at the front desk and receiving a handout with instructions and the first clue.
    • The goal of the activity is to retrace a researcher's steps, discover log in information to a Zotero account, and determine which of the suspects is the culprit.
  • Using the title and call number given in the handout, students locate a journal in the bound periodicals section.
    • Inside this journal is information for three books, each containing a part the culprit's Zotero account information.
  • Students will then search for each of the three books using the library catalog.
    • This will send students across the library with one book at the front desk at Course Reserves.
    • The first book as the Zotero account username.
    • The second and third books have clues that lead to a specific word on a specific page of a specific book in the reference collection. This word is the Zotero account password.
  • Once they have the username and password for the Zotero account, students will log in and use the saved citations to identify the culprit.
  • Students will return to the front desk to confirm their answer, complete the activity, and take a short survey.
    • Entering their email after completing the survey will provide students with a downloadable certificate of completion. This can be used as proof of completion for use as an assignment or extra credit.