Here is a picture of the power-point on the projection screen from last Friday night’s Quizzo Game at the Library
I wanted to give you readers an update on how Quizzo is going at the library. I have hosted it twice so far. It is held on the 4th Friday night of the month. We had it once in January and once in February and it has more than exceeded my expectations. The library staff have been phenomenal about promoting it. Both months staff members have made displays with books and signs promoting the monthly contest. The front desk staff and the reference librarian have told customers about it and gotten them interested in signing up. My library director Margie has generously made sure that we have a gift card prize to give away to the winning team. She has also taken the questions that I have submitted to her and put them into a power-point display and made sure I have had a helper both nights to assist me during the program.
The turn out on both Quizzo nights from the public has also floored me. Our first outing in January brought in 35 people. Last Friday’s February outing brought in over 45 people. We had 10 teams that night. I almost did not have enough room on my score sheet. The players also seemed like they were having a great time and I feel like many of them will be back in March.
Here is a photo gallery of some of our teams from February’s contest.
Another positive development on the Quizzo front is that in January I decided to send an e-mail about my blog post about library quizzo with Jon Mackey who runs Jon Mackey Quizzo. This is the company that I used to play with when I lived in the State College area. [You can read the post here].
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised when he e-mailed me back less than 24 hours later. He was very nice in the e-mail and he did two really great things for me unsolicited. First, he said he supported my Quizzo ambitions and to help me succeed at trivia night he send me several pages of questions and special rounds to use at my library Quizzo nights. Sweet, this mitzvah has already saved me many hours of work and I know will come in handy in the future. The second gift he gave me is that he, with my permission, re-posted my blog post on his Jon Mackey Quizzo Facebook page which got my post many more readers and maybe introduced my blog to a whole new audience.
So what am I working on this month? I am writing a new batch of questions. I have been learning this week online about how to write good trivia questions. Believe it or not, it is harder than you might think. It has taken me hours to write the questions and picture quizzes. I write some of the questions while I am working on the reference desk but I have found that in the past sometimes that leaves me a little frazzled when I am working at the reference desk so now I am doing the majoring of the quizzo writing at home so I can concentrate on what I am doing. This is fine with me because library quizzo is truly a labor of love for me. I find that with work things sometimes I am not all in, I always have one foot out the door, so it feels amazing to be this truly passionate about a work project.
Last month, I also sent sometime promoting Quizzo at the library by submitting free ads to the free local newspapers that reach people in the library’s service area. I plan on doing this again this month to really get out the word about Quizzo. I have found in my experience that it is easy to get children and their families out to library programs because people with children are looking for activities to do with their children. In contrast, it is harder to get adults to come to library programs so I am really floored and so grateful to have the program attendance that we have had so far. I am so thankful for my fellow staff members for their support and promotion of Quizzo and assistance thus far. I also want to give a shout out to my husband for listening to me talk about it all the time and for helping me to write questions. He is as passionate about Quizzo as I am and he has really been the my silent partner in this endeavor.
Also promised here is the Logo Quiz from February’s Trivia Contest.
I will post the answers this weekend. Comment below or on Facebook if you wish to guess.
March Quizzo will be on Friday, March 29 at 7 pm at the Indian Valley Public Library. If you live in the Telford, Souderton, Quakertown area and wish to play Quizzo at the library call (215) 723-9109 x3 or e-mail refdesk (at) ivpl.org to register your team.
