HTE Travels to Aurora University Phillips Library

November 13, 2013

Aurora University Phillips Library hosted the Here, There, and Everywhere exhibit for the month of October 2013. During that time, we had 38,523 people come into the library. Because of the placement of the exhibit, all of these people saw this exhibition. We had many students come through the exhibit, or stop and see the exhibition while taking a break from their studies. We also saw people from the surrounding community see the show as well, including children. We received phone calls and queries about the show.

Research Guides
Using our LibGuides (Springshare subject guide product) we created a research guide for the exhibition. This guide was linked directly to the Phillips Library website. The direct link to this guide is here: http://libguides.aurora.edu/everywhere This research guide includes links to the exhibition home site, links to NASA, Star Talk, websites, books, news feeds, and videos. This link above can be used by anyone hosting the exhibition and any library with the LibGuide product is welcome to take what they want and adapt the guide to their own uses.

Tours
While the library and exhibit were open to all during library hours, Phillips Library also hosted a class in Education that came by special arrangement and toured the exhibition. This class tried all the activities. They were interested in the bilingual displays.

On October 28th, Phillips Library hosted two school groups from the local area. These Middle School students toured the exhibition with Dr. Hans Beck. Below is a summary from him about the visit: “I have been working with local in-service and pre-service teachers at East Aurora School District 129, Aurora, Illinois, for over seven years. The schools are in a high-needs district with regard to public school education. Students face socio-economic and ESL challenges, but I have found that working with the science teachers in the two middle schools to be very supportive of students' achievements. One of those teachers is Mr. Gerry Mestek, a science teacher and one of my graduate students from AU's Teacher Leader Program in Science Education. On Oct. 28, 2013, Mr. Mestek, Science Teacher from Cowherd Middle School, brought two of his science classes to AU to see and use the "Here, There, and Everywhere Exhibition." He has been working to prepare them to set their goals high in science, so the event served as a springboard for a tour of the university campus and the new STEM School for grades 3-8.”

We used this downloadable worksheet with two middle school groups that toured the exhibit. The groups were large, so we had them work in pairs. This might be useful to others. Users are free to use this as they wish.

-- Lauren Jackson-Beck
Technical Services Librarian
Aurora University Library