Reaching out

BOOKING A DATE

The Library has taken on a new role — matchmaker.

Blind Date With A Book encourages students to read for pleasure when they surface from their studies and need to decompress. Students sign out books based on nothing more than intriguing clues. The books are wrapped to conceal cover details.

Held just before the February reading week, Blind Date With A Book attracted 250 students in 2016. In 2015, the program’s first year,  200-225 students took part.

HMMM … THIS LOOKS INTERESTING

Andy Weir’s The Martian may not have a thing to do with groundwater in southern Ontario, Jacobean theatre or hundreds of other subjects students study at the Library. Nonetheless, it contributes to the spirit  of the place.

The book is part of Waterloo Reads, a collection of more than 400 fiction and non-fiction titles available for students to borrow when they need a little rest and relaxation. A collaboration of the Library and local bookseller Words Worth Books, Waterloo Reads serves as a reminder that reading isn’t just a task; it’s an act of love.

CLARITY WHEN IT’S NEEDED

When ideas, arguments and words pile up on each other, help from the Writing Centre gets things flowing again.

The centre provides 33 hours a week of drop-in assistance for students at the Dana Porter and Davis Centre libraries — in addition to support the centre offers at its offices in South Campus Hall. Partnerships such as this benefit students by making the Library a complete resource for learning.

In its first year — from the spring of 2014 through the winter of 2015 — the drop-in service registered almost 1,400 meetings with students. Meetings increased 25 per cent in 2015-16.

We’re an external audience for writers. We work throughout the whole writing process, from brainstorming all the way through structure, argumentation and evidence.

CLARE BERMINGHAM, Manager of the Writing Centre