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Library Escape Room
Dora Rowe, Union Presbyterian Seminary

ABSTR ACT Gamification techniques have become very popular as 
tools of library instruction. Union Presbyterian Seminary developed an 
escape room as a voluntary information literacy program. Our goals 
were to help students hone their skills with the library’s databases, 
discover resources within the reference room, reinforce their citation 
skills, and remind them that finding information is fun. 

Creating the escape room began with an idea and ended with its 
assessment and plans to offer it again. In between was a process in 
which we learned how to develop the story and build the necessary 
structures, as well as market and host the event.

INTRODUCTION

It is sometimes a challenge to get timely library instruction to students 
in a way that will engage them when they are already working towards 
masters and doctoral degrees. Given the trends towards non-directed 
and “fun” ways to encourage learning and library usage, we on the 
Richmond campus of Union Presbyterian Seminary have begun 
adding voluntary, story-driven information literacy events to our 
repertory of offerings. 

One of our first endeavors was our library escape room. We began 
planning it over the summer of 2018, and it debuted in February 2019. 
We held it in the reference room and used the tools already in the room 
as both props and hint-makers. We only wanted a few participants 
for the first time, but in our minds from the beginning was the hope 
that we could use the plan again for our Fall Student Orientation. 
We designed it to be a fun evening with the ulterior purpose of 
encouraging use of the reference room and providing students with 
a non-linear opportunity to reinforce their research skills.

We began by outlining the idea to library administration. Given our 
limited resources, we justified the program by aligning it to library 



156  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

instruction. In general, escape rooms can offer several benefits with 
respect to education. Even when they are offered strictly as entertain-
ment, they create social cohesion and help to relieve stress. However, 
adding an information literacy component convinced our seminary 
librarian that this was a good use of both our time and budget.

RESEARCH PHASE

Once approval was firmly in place, we began to research how to 
develop a challenging but enjoyable escape room. Since not every-
one on our team had actually participated in one, the first thing was 
to visit a well-reviewed professional escape room. We took mental 
notes while we were struggling with the puzzles and locks. Luckily, 
in the end we all escaped! 

We went online for the next phase of research. Watching a season’s 
worth of “Escape! With Janet Varney” from the Geek and Sundry 
YouTube site allowed us to recognize patterns and similarities in the 
types of puzzles.1 We also used several different instructional and 
“DIY” sites to round out the first phase our research.

Armed with this, we went in search of librarians with some expe-
rience with similar outreach programs. The permanent escape room 
hosted by one of our local academic libraries, Walter M. Bortz III 
Library at Hampden-Sydney College, was consistently mentioned as 
a resource. We contacted Maryśka Connolly-Brown and interviewed 
her when we toured the Bortz Escape Room.

Several years ago, Bortz Library dedicated a storage area to the 
permanent installation of an escape room open to the whole campus 
community for a fee. They built three rooms in the space and devel-
oped the first story with little budget for more than locks and boxes. It 
proved so popular that they currently mount a different story with new 
puzzles every year, and it has become not just self-funding, but they 
use excess proceeds to fund other special projects within the library.2

Managing realistic expectations was one of Ms. Connolly-Brown’s 
nuggets. She concurred with the professional escape room’s group size 
limits of no more than eight people and no fewer than three or four. 
She suggested that the library should get as much institutional buy-in 
for the project as possible. And finally, the room should be complex 



Listen and Learn  157

enough to be challenging, but not so difficult as to be impossible to 
complete in an hour.3

The final step in the research phase was to build an initial budget 
for approval. We brainstormed what we thought we should buy, based 
on what we had seen and questions that we had asked of Ms. Connolly-
Brown. We knew we would need a variety of locks and boxes, to hold 
clues and other objects. We wanted black lights and marker pens, 
because as Ms. Connolly-Brown had said, “Black light flashlights are 
just cool!”4 We needed decorations and office supplies, and, finally, 
we set aside a little extra for incidentals that we hadn’t considered. In 
the end, we budgeted $300.

DEVELOPING THE STORY

The heart of the escape room is the story that frames it. It needs to be 
simple and easy to adapt, but like any story, it should have a begin-
ning, a middle, and an end. Since it will be completely interactive, 
we felt that a highly structured script would be a mistake, especially 
since we needed to be able to improvise hints to our students. And we 
wanted all of the clues and puzzles to tie together the different rooms 
we designed.

We started with a storyboard. We mapped the reference room first, 
then a little entry area next to it which we converted into an office for 
the event. In retrospect, we probably should have used graph paper 
and made it to scale, but we just made rough sketches of the different 
areas. We used these then to design the flow of the story, much like we 
would chart a theatrical scene.

Once we had a clear story, we needed to assign roles to our team. 
One of our team volunteered to be our artist, and used a mix of char-
coals and Sharpie markers to create pictures that acted as both clues 
and ambience. We needed someone (or several people) to engineer 
the extra room, although we planned to ask the Seminary Physical 
Plant for the actual construction. We decided to ask one of the student 
workers to help us set up and tear down, while one of the librarians 
would act as the hinter and the “mad librarian.”

After the roles were assigned, we identified the supplies we needed 
and began to build the shopping lists online. Also, we found multimedia 



158  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

blank art canvases, as well as poster board, markers and pens, at a 
local art supply store. Our artist used many of her own materials, such 
as charcoal pens and Sharpie markers. We requisitioned basic office 
supplies like tape, glue, and staples from the library’s supply cabinet, 
and lastly, we went “shopping” in the library’s storage areas for old 
equipment, clocks, desks, file cabinets, and other items that made 
excellent window dressing for our stage design.

CREATING THE PUZZLES

Once the story is developed and fleshed out, the next step is creating 
the puzzles. Yet again, having multiple people on the team is very help-
ful. The key to a truly memorable escape room is to design things for 
many different types of learning styles. Some should be easy, some 
deceptively easy, and some very challenging. Similarly, we found that 
visual puzzles, physical puzzles, logic puzzles, and even old-fashioned 
jigsaw puzzles are popular. While creating all of this, we kept the clues 
written as if dictated by our mad librarian.

A critical point, however, was that our puzzles needed to use a 
skill that we were highlighting. We went to the ACRL Framework for 
Information Literacy and assigned specific practices to encourage 
dispositions.5 We also asked our colleagues what one or two things 
their imaginary perfect student would know. Then we created puzzles 
around the feedback and suggestions.

The reference librarian provided us with a list of resources that 
she wanted us to highlight. While she knew that she gave more than 
we needed, the list formed the backbone of clue locations. We placed 
guide handouts for searching the databases and the catalog in differ-
ent books, as well as individual items needed to escape. We took a 
discarded newspaper and hid clues in it, both with invisible writing 
and in a simple underlining code.

We decided early on to address the online elephant in the room. 
Several of the puzzles required the use of our databases and the full-
text finder. We also wanted them to use the catalog. So, we set up a 
spare individual printer on one of the computers. The puzzles them-
selves required students to find clues to specific titles of books and 
articles, as well the title of one journal from its ISSN.



Listen and Learn  159

Again, though, we really wanted the puzzles to reflect the multi-
ple intelligences that characterize our students. For example, we 
used tangrams, pre-made puzzle boxes, and the secret writing for 
those who learn best kinesthetically, and therefore were better with 
puzzles that they could physically manipulate. The tangram puzzle, 
once completed, provided a graphic clue for a visual learner, as do 
codes hidden in pictures and deciphering clues in the secret writing. 
Logical thinkers really appreciated our chess puzzles and traditional 
logic puzzles. Our verbal and written learners excelled with riddles 
and substitution codes.

Once they were written, we listed the puzzles in a chart. We listed 
the clue to solve it, the location of both the puzzle and the clue, and 
then the location of the clue. We included the text of the clues, even 
though each one was handwritten, as if our librarian was in the habit 
of writing notes to herself, then losing them. Doing this meant that 
we could, at a day’s notice, set up the room and always have it play 
the same.

After all of this was done, we finished off our shopping list and 
purchased the items. We bought most of the tools and locks from 
a large online warehouse store. We also found some things from a 
traditional office supply store, from discount stores, and an art store. 
However, we found quite a bit hiding in storage and even in library 
staff members’ homes.

CONSTRUCTING THE ROOM 

Since we wanted the students to begin in the back of the atrium of the 
library, we needed to create a faux closure as a visual break hiding 
the rest of the library. We didn’t want to use a true physically built 
structure. Therefore, we created a “wall” made from two dark brown 
twin bed sheets and hung them from the ceiling using pencils, binder 
clips and fishing line. 

While the ideal wall construction would be the large display 
panels used for artistic and other exhibitions—they are about 6’6” in 
height—most of those panels were in use for a photographic installa-
tion. Therefore, we only had one two-board panel that could be used. 
However, by placing it next to the corner of the alcove leading into the 



160  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

reference room, we created the illusion of an actual room.
Otherwise, we used the reference room without much change. 

We hosted the room in the evening after the library closed, but we 
remained mindful that patrons would expect an orderly area the 
following morning. We used existing aspects of the room, such as the 
lifting shelves for the back issues of periodicals, the seating areas, 
and the occasional tables. 

Using the storyboard and the chart, we placed the pictures, the 
boxes, and the clues. This took longer than we expected, but having the 
visual representation was essential. Well-chosen sounds increased 
the ambience and the tension, so we played the base sound of a clock 
ticking in the background. Once we finally locked both doors, we were 
ready to invite our students to try to escape.

RUNNING THE ROOM

Because we wanted a small group, we only advertised through campus 
email and on the private campus Facebook page. We also attended the 
seminary’s weekly gathering and personally invited students. Finally, 
we encouraged our student assistants to “talk it up.”

Before we hosted it for real, we invited several students to test our 
puzzles. Following them and taking notes to find the places where 
they struggled allowed us to fix issues. Beta testing the entire escape 
room is a must. It’s the only way to find things that don’t go correctly 
or discover badly worded clues and puzzles.6 

When show day finally came, we set up the room, and then went 
out to meet our guests. We discovered that going over our simple rules 
made the best start. Don’t destroy the room. Don’t put away the used 
books. Recognize where the exits are, because we can’t actually lock 
anyone up. Then, we gave the introduction to the story, stepped back, 
and let them begin.

One thing that we learned is that we have a tendency to want to hint. 
Of course, our primary intention is to help them escape, because the 
actual purpose is for them to use their research skills to help them solve 
the puzzles. However, our room ended up being very challenging—“as 
hard as the hard rooms I’ve paid to do,” said one of our reviews!—so 
having a free hand with the clues assured that everyone escaped. 



Listen and Learn  161

ASSESSMENTS

As enjoyable as the escape room was, at the end we needed to assess 
whether the program was successful from a library standpoint. We 
had several assessment tools at our disposal for our programs. In 
general, for our many programs we would choose between surveys, 
exit interviews, and analyzing our usage statistics several weeks after 
the program.

The students that participated gave glowing reviews. They told not 
just us, but other people on campus as well. They felt that the room 
was challenging and well-designed, and that it had an engaging story 
that was integrated throughout the rooms. Nothing felt rushed, nor 
did they get the sense that they were just completing puzzles for no 
reason.

However, they also felt that they were not the best target audi-
ence for this specific scenario. They were more advanced students, 
some in their last semester. While the night was “a good refresher of 
the texts in the Reference Room,” and while they learned a couple of 
incidental things, they didn’t feel that they were introduced to any 
new material or concepts related to research or using the library in 
general and the reference room in particular. They all agreed that this 
particular escape room should be made a part of our standard New 
Student Orientation.

We performed neither pre- nor post-event assessment surveys 
with this initial group. Using their feedback, we approached Student 
Services about adding a voluntary evening session several nights of 
our Orientation Week. We did pre-event and post-event assessment 
on these nights. We had mainly positive comments, with students 
saying that they felt far more confident about using the library and 
more aware of what we offered. 

The only negative feedback came the evening that the event was 
overscheduled. Too many people made the teamwork diffuse, and that 
game took far longer than the hour that was planned. Again, we did not 
want students to fail to escape in this specific scenario, so we added 
to their time. Even the students who provided that feedback said that 
they would enjoy doing a new scenario highlighting a different section 
of the library, as long as we enforced a stricter limit on participants.



162  ATL A 2019 PROCEEDINGS

GOING FORWARD

While we still don’t have complete usage statistics yet, anecdotal 
evidence is suggesting that introducing the escape room in Orien-
tation has worked. Our reference librarian has reported a substan-
tial increase in students using her services in the first month of the 
semester. While it is not likely entirely attributable to the escape room 
event, as only half of our incoming class elected to participate, most 
of those students did report an increased feeling of comfort using our 
reference resources.

In future years, we may tweak the storyline to keep it relevant, 
but “Escape the Mad Librarian” will likely remain a staple of our New 
Student Orientation. We will provide Student Services with a little 
more guidance on how we would like them to address over-sched-
uling. That way we will ensure that we maintain a limited number of 
participants in each group.

Gamification of library instruction seems to have worked, and 
we will continue to add offerings of this type of program to our 
more traditional menu of workshops and in-class sessions. We are 
beginning to prepare another escape scenario, this time highlighting 
our audiovisual collection and our new makerspace. We are also 
exploring other avenues of non-structured information literacy 
programs intended to teach research skills while providing an 
entertaining background.



Listen and Learn  163

ENDNOTES

1  Escape! With Janet Varney, produced by Geek and Sundry, 2017, 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7atuZxmT957_
N4O2Jp3bMXmq_Y7J-mK-.

2  Maryśka Connolly-Brown, interview by Dora Rowe, “Running 
an Escape Room in an Academic Library” (unpublished), 
December 13, 2018.

3  Connolly-Brown.
4  Connolly-Brown.
5  Association of College and Research Libraries, “Framework 

for Information Literacy for Higher Education,” January 11, 
2016, http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework.

6  Marc Hight and Maryśka Connolly-Brown, “Designing an 
Escape Room,” prezi.com, November 26, 2018, https://prezi.
com/qmyjdw7c98uu/designing-an-escape-room.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7atuZxmT957_N4O2Jp3bMXmq_Y7J-mK-
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL7atuZxmT957_N4O2Jp3bMXmq_Y7J-mK-
http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework
https://prezi.com/qmyjdw7c98uu/designing-an-escape-room
https://prezi.com/qmyjdw7c98uu/designing-an-escape-room

