STUDENT OUTREACH
FALL FEST 2024
Another year, another successful Fall Fest! With the theme, “Through the Learning Glass,” over 550 participants attended to learn what the Libraries’ have to offer. Students, faculty, and staff were seen, visiting booths about spaces, virtual learning, and borrowing. This year, volunteers from every department of the libraries, including off-campus sites like the Interim Library Facility, joined to run the event. A special guest, the Special & Area Studies Collection (SASC)’s SASCwatch, stomped among the students, taking photos, giving out high-fives, and representing our most special collections.
Inspiration for the theme, “Through the Learning Glass: Become Curiouser and Curiouser with Smathers,” came from our Special & Area Studies Collections, which has many different iterations of the children’s classic, “Alice in Wonderland” in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature. The Fall Fest team pulled colors, text, and design styles from the library archives.
Fall Fest began in 2019 to widen the Smathers Libraries’ reach to the UF student community. This event promotes library services and provides information to new and returning UF students. Fall Fest embodies the Libraries’ mission to illuminate excellence, encourage creativity, and facilitate inquiry.
Each year the Fall Fest planning committee strives to inform all students about the Libraries and foster excitement about our six unique campus branches. The event allows students to see that Libraries are more than spaces and books; they have access to specialists, databases, collections and so much more.
STUDENT OUTREACH
WHAT IS FALL FEST?
FALL FEST SHOWCASES OUR THREE MAIN SERVICE AREAS: PHYSICAL SPACES, CIRCULATING ITEMS, AND VIRTUAL SERVICES.
The physical spaces encompass six branches, each dedicated to different disciplines. These six libraries are:
- Architecture and Fine Arts in the Fine Arts Building
- Education Library in Norman Hall
- Health Science Center Library in the Communicore Building near Shand
- Marston Science Library in Turlington Plaza
- Library West in the Plaza of the Americas
- Smathers Library next to Library West.
Each library has something to offer for every student on campus along with librarians who specialize in almost every subject offered on campus.
Our circulating items include physical materials that can be borrowed from the Libraries like books and DVDs. The Libraries also offer opportunities for students to borrow technology and equipment to aid in assignments or personal projects. The Libraries offer everything from typewriters to cameras and even podcasting equipment.
Finally, the virtual services include myriad databases that students can access. The Libraries offer free subscriptions to newspapers, a multitude of films to stream online, and digital collections that are archived and downloadable for their use.
Through a series of quick visits to each station at the event, students discover new and unique services available to them, even if they already have a favorite library they visit regularly. The Libraries hope the students to learn something in those moments, leave with an armload of library swag, and the knowledge that there is an army of library professionals ready to help them navigate their college years.
