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AALL Centennial Celebration Toolkit:
Trivia Games

Ever watched "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" or "Jeopardy?" Sure you have, you can admit it. Why - because they are fun and instructive. Doing something similar for your local association can encourage more active participation by others, both at the local and national level. Trivia games are also great ice breakers at meetings where everyone doesn't know each other or know each other well.

Trivia games are easy to create, entailing no more research than may be done in three different books: the AALL Reference Book, published by Hein & Co., the AALL Directory and Handbook, published annually by CCH and the AALL Annual Meetings: An Annotated Index of the Recordings, no. 32 in the "AALL Publications Series," though other sources such as LLJ or local sources may be consulted.

Create questions whose answers require either research or a deep knowledge of your association. Prizes should be awarded for the most or most complete answers.

Solicitation of prizes may be done through local vendors, national vendors, or supplied from purchases made from local chapter funds. Prizes need not be expensive - some of the most fun giveaways at the annual meetings have cost under a dollar each (anyone recall the Federal Document Retrieval slinky made from plastic?).

Several types of questions are possible:

1. Personal questions - the individual members are queried for "personal details" or events which are then disassociated from a list of the names of the respondents. Members PLAYING are required to interview and/or ask questions of everyone on the respondents list to determine who "ran the mile the fastest in my high" or such similar questions, and then associate the member name with the event or personal detail. This will also enable members to become better acquainted with one another. This is a good ice breaker to be distributed at a small meeting with some time for mingling and conversation.
2. Questions about the history of the national association or the local chapter may be posed. Questions may be culled from the sources mentioned or from local or national archives.
3. General trivia - multiple choice questions may be compiled on facets of or trivia concerning the chapters of the Association. These might be based on the subjects in the National Library Week Toolkits compiled by LexisNexis: Geography, Famous People, Know Your Leaders, and the like. Examples of questions that might be included in general trivia games are:
   1. Geography: name the states in these Chapters: COALL, MAALL. What countries have members in AALL? What non-U.S. country has the most members? This river flows through the most states in MALL.
   2. Famous People: Who had Father Guido Sarducci speak at the closing banqet? Who was the first recipient of the Joseph L. Andrews Bibliographical Award?
   3. Know Your Leaders: Who chaired the copyright committee in 1976? Who is the Washington Affairs Representative? Who is the Associate Washington Affairs Representative? Name the current executive committee. Who went off the executive committee last year?

More Toolkits