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As a freshman at ÁùºÏ±¦µä, I was lucky enough to land an on-campus job working for University Libraries. Working on-campus has many perks - convenient location, flexible scheduling, and many more - though at the time I didn't realize that one of the most valuable would be the front seat it gave me to the many academic resources University Libraries offered to students, like me. I took advantage of those resources, eventually graduated, and now I've started a career with the same on-campus job I started out with seven years ago. Why? Simply put, the @One inside of the Mathewson-IGT Knowledge Center is a great resource that I think all University students should know about.

The @One is a computer lab on the first floor of the Knowledge Center that specializes in digital literacy. We offer equipment for checkout, large scale printing, and most importantly, software help from a knowledgeable, friendly staff. Though, in my new role, I was starting to notice that while other aspects of our department were very popular, such as the virtual reality lab or poster printing for example, our software help was not being utilized to the best of its ability. So, after some meetings, we decided to take a more relaxed approach to software tutorials this semester - rather than waiting for students to come to us, we would preemptively offer lessons that students could attend in the @One for free.

As such, we began planning a day filled with lessons based around large scale printing, which was dubbed "The @One Poster Palooza." Poster Palooza will take place throughout the @One from 9 a.m. - 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 15. It is free and all ÁùºÏ±¦µä students are welcome to attend and participate.

The idea behind Poster Palooza was to help students become more efficient when it comes to the differences between an effective or ineffective poster, how to use PowerPoint to create posters, and of course, how to place an order for the poster students create in the @One. We are hosting the event in February to reach students early in the semester before the stress of midterms and finals takes hold.

All educational lessons offered at Poster Palooza will last about 30 minutes. We designed the event in this fashion to help accommodate our busy university students' schedules. We understand students don't have a lot of free time. Poster Palooza will provide students with a quick, hands-on opportunity to learn valuable skills and immediately start applying them to their course work. We will also have extra staff on hand in order to answer both general and assignment specific questions, or to help slower paced students.

Any student that attends Poster Palooza will be entered in a raffle for a chance to win a free academic poster print from the @One, offered on satin or matte paper at the standard size of 48 x 36. Together we can ensure that all students are aware of the free, or otherwise very cheap, resources that they have available to them in the @One - and not just the lucky ones with a front seat like I had.