AUK Library Holds Open House

The American University of Kuwait (AUK) Library hosted an Open House in February to members of the AUK community. This annual event is held to introduce visitors to the Library's latest technological features and resources, and enhance their overall library experience by familiarizing them with all the services available at the Library.

During the half-day event, Library staff members were on hand to provide information, give tours of the facilities and engage the students in intellectual exchange and competitions. Ms. Asma Al-Kanan, the Library Director, expressed her pleasure with the success of the event. "Over 200 students, faculty and staff participated in the Library activities today. The festivities of the day bring everyone closer and give librarians the opportunity to promote new resources, meet with old and new students and answer their questions. This yearâs Library Open House featured an Instagram photo booth for visitors to capture their moments and a prize wheel game where they learn in a more fun and interactive way," she said.

The competitions and prizes were sponsored by some of the Library's international partners and academic resource providers. SAGE, Emerald, and Lexis Nexis represented by their local agent in Kuwait, Virtus Group, offered prizes that included a Kindle Paperwhite, a Kindle Fire HD, and a Galaxy Tab. The Library also held a raffle drawing, in which participants won vouchers from the AUK Bookstore and an Ipad mini, which was a prize provided by EBSCO Publishing and was presented through their local agent in Kuwait, "Naseej".

Throughout the day, online demos on the different tools and resources available at the Library were featured, and visitors were introduced to the digital libraries of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Computer Society (IEEE), RefWorks, an online citation management tool, Literature Online, a leading online resource for the study and teaching of literature in English, and Credo Reference, a research tool and a collection of online sources.

The AUK Library holds more than 42,000 print books in different disciplines, in addition to thousands of E-books and other electronic resources. Over the past 12 years of its existence, the Library has undergone physical and technological upgrades to cater for the growing academic and technological needs of the AUK community. Last year, the AUK Library became the first in Kuwait to introduce the 3M SelfCheck kiosk, a device that allows Library visitors to self-checkout books without stopping by the helpdesk.

Released by the Office of Public Affairs on the 2nd March 2015

Photography by the Office of Public Affairs (C) 2015