Digital/Physical Library Scavenger Hunt

First, I would strongly recommend having discussed digital research strategies and research goals for the class prior to this activity. We had already done these things, which was helpful because the digital research components of the exercise were much-needed practice but not first-time efforts (which undoubtedly saved time), and because they had a better understanding of why exactly I'd be encouraging them to find resources about Nigerian history, for example, when we were discussing a coming-of-age novel set primarily in Lagos (Chris Abani's GraceLand). 

More immediately prior to the library scavenger hunt day, the instructor should create the scavenger hunt sheet. Because my own questions were so tailored to our specific class, I don't want to lay out our exact set of questions here, but here are some of the types of questions I found most productive: 

• Questions about relevant library resources. For example, I asked them how they'd obtain a copy of a certain book of which I knew UT didn't have a copy. Some of them already knew about Interlibrary Services, others decided to ask someone at the Help desk, etc. 
• Questions for which the answers could be found either digitally or physically. For example, I asked them to decide which chapter of a particular history book seemed like it would offer the most relevant context for a story we'd been analyzing in class. I chose this book purposely both because it was pertinent and because I knew it was available both via Google Books and in hard copy at the library. In our subsequent class discussion, we compared/contrasted strategies for tracking down digital vs. physical resources. 
• Questions that require students to consider the library's physical layout. That is, I asked them to find a particular book (the collection of short stories from which we had read) and then identify two others on nearby shelves that seemed relevant and interesting. A lot of them later indicated that even if they'd tracked down a book at the library before, they'd never thought to look around for pertinent titles in the area. 
• Questions that require just one extra step of Googling and/or that are solveable by using a series of different research strategies. For example, I asked them to find an article in Research in African Literatures about the novel we were reading. (I knew the journal had published several articles on the novel over the last ten years or so.) Most of them didn't know what Research in African Literatures was, but they all came up with an appropriate article, some because they'd Googled the journal title, others because they used library databases, and so forth. The various strategies they deployed to answer this question led us to an especially fruitful conversation later.

Ideally, the instructor should also assign teams in advance of the scavenger hunt. What worked well for me was to create an even distribution of English/Rhetoric majors, students with different class standings, etc., among the teams. 

The instructor should also take into account questions of student mobility, disability, etc. I conferred with my students beforehand to make sure that the walk from the classroom to the library and the movement around the library was not at all burdensome for them.