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Feature of the week : Making an Exhibition, Finding the Library’s Next Top Model

This week’s feature is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the FACES exhibition in Special Collections, which ran from December 1, 2010 – January 21, 2011. (You can still see the display through to January 31st when the next scheduled change happens, but the contest is over and the names of all the Famous Faces have been revealed!)

Setting the stage
Take one Image Arts student working in Special Collections as an Exhibitions Assistant through the Summer Work Study program and ask her to re-imagine a contest timed for the winter break…

2009/10 Holiday Photo Contest announcement
2009/10 Holiday Photo Contest announcement : Past winter contests have asked for users to contribute holiday-themed photos

This student decides that a guessing game would be fun, but how do we personalize it for Ryerson? A call goes out to our staff for help!

Library staff recruitment ad : not what you’d typically see

Following through
We had 4 volunteer models from our happy group: a Librarian, two Library Technicians and an Administrative Assistant. We couldn’t have asked for a better mix!

Now that we had our volunteers, we looked for some inspiration (think you can guess the staff members we were picturing?):

Our Exhibitions Assistant narrows down the results to two options and edits the photos:

Making it Happen
Working with another student in the Library employed by the Work Study program, our Exhibitions Assistant and Graphic Design Assistant come up with a look for the contest form online using the final poster girl:

Final poster for the contest

Voilà, a successful competition was born! Thanks to Exhibitions Assistant Elaine Chan-Dow and Graphic Designer Alicia Russano (who also came up with the look for our new website). And thanks to our volunteer models!