Earlier this month, the Student Engagement Committee greeted incoming the Feb class with a poll asking: “What’s your favorite pop culture library?” We thought this would be both a fun way to link the Middlebury Libraries to the idea of the library in popular imagination, as well as an opportunity to test some new surveying strategies.
To conduct the survey, we used a 32-inch touchscreen monitor (courtesy of Academic Technology) located in the atrium of the Davis Family Library to display animated gifs depicting well-known libraries from various films and television programs, linked to the Qualtrics survey platform. Over five days, 52 library visitors voted for their favorite pop culture libraries. Respondents were able to view poll results as they accumulated, and were invited to ask for more information about the pop culture references at our Research Desk. They could also easily find call numbers there for DVDs in our collection, in case they wanted to revisit the original sources of the fictitious libraries.
And the results? Drumroll, please…
- The Citadel, from Game of Thrones: 24%
- Hogwarts Library, from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone: 23%
- Shermer High School Library, from The Breakfast Club: 20%
- New York Public Library, Fifth Avenue Branch, from Ghostbusters (1984): 10%
- Pawnee Public Library, from Parks and Recreation: 9%
- The Library Planet, from Doctor Who: 8%
- The Archives, from Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones: 5%
- River City Library, from The Music Man: 1%