Spur of the Moment

I enjoyed this post by Shelf Check's Emily Lloyd about the possibility of spontaneous library programs. Something that you have basic rules and equipment for in advance, but don't have any specific date or publicity for--then, when the moment strikes, you can break out an unexpected program!

For example:

My particular nerdy fantasy is for a whistling contest. It's busy; one of us announces over the loudspeaker, "Okay, it's obvious there are a lot of bodies in the library right now. But how many of you can WHISTLE? We're having a spontaneous whistling smackdown in the meeting room in five minutes. Who will be [Name of Town's] Next Top Whistler?" (In my fantasy, we also film willing contestants with a Flip and upload the videos to the library's YouTube channel).

I personally can't whistle at all, so I wouldn't be a participant in that one, but I could judge!

We don't have a loudspeaker at my library, plus I'm not sure how pleased the intently focused students would be if we started making noise in our not-very-soundproofed meeting room, but I'm intrigued by the general idea.

Honestly, spontaneity might not translate that well with the kind of programming we do ("Spontaneous PubMed class! Textbook read-off! Get to know Web of Science! Thesis formatting contest starts now!"), but maybe that just means we should do more exciting programs.

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