Library News for May 2014

The month of April included Library Week at Abu Dhabi Women’s Colleges, from 20 - 24 April. It would have been hard to miss Library Week with all the signs, events and changes in the arrangement of furniture! The theme for ADWC and KWC ‘s 2014 Library Week was "life lessons @ your library". So in keeping with the theme, we offered events and displays that sought to influence and educate our users beyond the usual stereotypical roles placed on libraries.

A student "Zooming" with a Librarian at a different campus - between KWC and ADM

We had our "Majilis Makerspace", an area in the Library that touched on both the culture of the UAE, as well as providing a unique learning environment where students could learn in a practical way. In our "Majilis Makerspace" we offered a 3Doodler presentation at the City College, where Applied Media students could experiment with this exciting new design technology. We had some very interesting designs and library visitors continued to be creative with their Instagram and Twitter feeds. We are working on choosing a winner for the ILC Screensaver competition and we will let you know who the winner is in the next edition.

A display on HE Shaikh Mohammad's new book "Flashes of Thought" at ADW

We were also interested in hearing what students and faculty thought about eBooks versus print books. We have gathered a lot of interesting data from your results which we will share in the next newsletter. We were able to introduce faculty and students to our Overdrive collection of eBooks using the App we mentioned in last month’s newsletter. Students were also treated to a work shop on how to read to children. We were very lucky to have Scholastic set up a book fair at KWC, so students and faculty could buy lots of interesting books to read to their families or for themselves.

Everything ready for the Scholastic Book Fair at KWC

Students were able to try writing a Wikipedia entry and found out that we can play a valuable role in being contributors to Wikipedia. Also during Library Week, we had a continuous display of extracts from H. E. Shaikh Mohammad bin Rashid al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai's latest book "Flashes of Thought". There are so many "life lessons" that we could all benefit from by reading the ideas, memories and wisdom of this great leader.

Finally, our Lucky Draw for Library Week winners were as follows:
Saleha Naseeb Al Dhaheri from ADWC, and
Hanan Saleh Abdulkhaleq Saleh from KWC
Congratulations to them both!