Cephalonian Method 2: Cephalonia Strikes Back

We've been open to the public a week now (hurrah!) and certainly it feels as though we've been missed. Term had begun at the beginning of the month, but it was only today that we finally ran the induction for postgraduate students. Sadly only three made it along at the ungodly hour of 10 am, but that made for a pleasantly informal chat rather than a hectoring lecture, which I think has three advantages:

1. Smaller groups ask more questions and are less afraid to put their hands up or interrupt to query something.
2. You can bounce off the body language much better with a small group (are they bored? do they look confused? much easier to read signs like that in a small group than a large one).
3. Finding the experience informal and friendly means they'll be more likely to come back again, even if it's just to ask all the questions they'd forgotten to ask during the tour.

I tried to encourage a bit of interaction; asking them to ask me the questions rather than overloading them with information, but adding little snippets of advice with each answer I gave. So, "do you have a copier?" is answered with something like: "yes, it's self-service, coin-operated, so you don't need to buy a card to use it, and it does colour photocopying too."

It was also interesting when I mentioned we use LC classification to see the sighs of relief on the students' faces; I guess that's a disadvantage to an in-house classification scheme that I hadn't thought of - it may suit your books better, but not necessarily your users, who may well have got Dewey or LC all figured out elsewhere.

We'll see if the induction worked over the next few weeks I guess.

In other news, we had our first Novice Squad session with the archery club last night. Lots of promising young talent there, which bodes well for the season. Plus a few joined us in the pub afterwards - also very promising!