Herbal magic project

I thought readers of my blog might be interested to know about a small project we are currently involved with in Newcastle. Led by our Education Officer, Sara Bird, a small group of library staff are working with academics, university students and local schools on a series of activities focused towards the British Science Festival. The BSF will be held in Newcastle in September and we wanted to find a way to showcase library resources and information literacy for science subjects. We decided to base our work on the fabulous collection of herbals held in our Special Collections and to work with staff and students involved with the Masters in Medicinal Plants. This has resulted in an exciting collection of activities. The project started with a workshop for 20 MSc students, to introduce them to library resources and IL techniques. Their task is to create a handout, each focused on a different herb, drawing material from the old herbals as well as modern library resources. The work is assessed and the students have to make it accessible to a wide audience, school children and their parents as well as future MSc students. This is great practical experience for them and we will also use the material they produce to create a Library Guide on medicinal plants.
The next step is to design a workshop for local school children and next month we will be testing our ideas on a group of local children, who will come into the university for a day. They will visit the Library and use our herbals to make their own herbal handouts, following this with an exciting session with some of the academic staff and students, as well as library staff, using herbs to make bath bombs and hand creams. Who would ever have thought working in a library would involve making bath bombs!