this is going better than I dared hope. Rock on, students. - Jenica

our stairwells to the basement weren't supposed to be public use, but 20 years ago we put stacks down there... so the stairwells terrify people, and suck. We're inviting students to spraypaint them as part of our Finals Week Stressbusting activities, to make them friendlier. And it's going pretty well! - Jenica

http://www.flickr.com/photos... Before - Jenica

http://www.flickr.com/photos... After - Jenica

You are the best University Librarian evar. - DJF

I try. :P I figured that if it turned out badly, we'd slap a coat of white over the top and it'd still be better than when we started... - Jenica

http://www.flickr.com/photos... The ad. (I'm planning to blog all of this tomorrow) - Jenica

That. Is. Awesome. Also, what DJF said. - Catherine Pellegrino

love it! - βℜ∀ñÐi

this is the coolest thing ever! you rock, Jenica and your students rock. can i come work for you? - Christa

Apparently SUNY GEneseo does something similar with whiteboards? (from NGC4LIB today) Not quite this radical but Cyril Oberlander, SUNY Geneseo, another speaker at NE ASIS&T this week told how they had put white boards in the stair wells. He'd write questions each day and leave markers for students to comment. This actually sparked comments on the comments so a "conversation" would happen. Each morning he takes a picture of the board, erases it and puts up a new question. I thought that was pretty cool way to get interaction the students felt safe with. - awd

Cyril is great -- he's doing amazing stuff with the IDS Project, and GIST is going to change the acquisitions world, I suspect. Next time the SUNY Directors meet I'll pick his brain on this, too. Thanks, Aaron! - Jenica

This is so cool, Jenica! - Laura H.

Dorothea: http://toolkit.idsproject.org/doku..., http://idsproject.org/Tools... API-laden materials request tool linked to ILLIAD to integrate acquisitions and ILL into more of a unified "resource delivery" model. - Jenica

I think there are some stairwells at Evergreen State College that are similarly painted, or at least there were several years ago. Brutalism cries out for graffiti, IMHO. - Elaine is trying to write

<threadjacking myself> Dorothea, also consider following Kate Pitcher -- http://twitter.com/kepitcher -- she's the CD librarian at Geneseo, and works closely with Cyril on the CD side of resource sharing. - Jenica

Awesome. Love the whiteboard idea, too. - Bill Hooker

On the subject of whiteboards/graffiti/etc, here's a brilliant version of this from my alma mater: http://www.oberlin.edu/library... - Catherine Pellegrino

Love love love this idea! and am totally stealing Cyril's idea too!!! - RudĩϐЯaЯïan