One university leveraged the resources available in its library multimedia department to trade headshots of students for use in professional spaces like LinkedIn or Job Portfolios with a few words about the value the library was providing the students. Armed with a DSLR and a video camera, the library embarked on a mission to showcase our best and brightest in the span of a few shutter clicks, some quick clean-up in photo editing software and some video rendering in exchange for a few good words about the librarians and the library.

What began as one idea a year ago to support a group of students holding a career fair in the University Library has grown into a regular appearance at career-fairs, student orientations, capstone presentations, and promotions throughout the University. To date, the library has captured over 1,000 headshots and has cataloged media for photo stills and video for participation in events throughout the University.

Student and faculty library advocates talk about what they love best about the library providing us with media support communicating, in our students and faculty’s own words, the library’s value. In return, our participants have beautifully rendered photos and video that they’ve shared out proudly on multiple platforms on social media, job boards, and electronic portfolios. Our poster will be a collage of the different forms of media we’ve collected during our “Putting Our Best Faces Forward” campaign.