News Release

‘Treasure hunt’ comes to Penn State Harrisburg

June 25, 2008

A treasure hunt for the digital age now includes Penn State Harrisburg.

The brainchild of Humanities Reference Librarian and Archivist Heidi Abbey, the college and its library have become an official geocaching site with information on the treasure hunt available by registering free at www.geocaching.com.

Abbey says she was inspired to introduce geocaching to campus by the work of colleague Linda Musser, head of the Earth and Mineral Sciences Library at University Park, who set up a site of her own in State College in 2005.

Geocaching is an outdoor treasure hunting game in which participants use a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and CPS coordinates or waypoints to hide and seek containers also known as caches. Today, more than 800,000 geocaches are registered on various web sites devoted to the pastime. Geocaches are located in all 50 states and more than 100 countries around the world and on all seven continents, including Antarctica.

An adaptation of the more than 100-year-old hobby of letterboxing, geocaching began in May 2000 when satellite and global positioning information was made available to the general public. The first cache was placed for hikers in a forest just outside Portland, Ore., and announced on a USENET newsgroup for people to find. Next came web sites with information, clues and coordinates for persons using GPS units.

Participants must first register with the web site to participate in the hunt. “Within one hour of our location being registered, reviewed, and posted on the geocaching.com web site, the first person found the cache box on campus,” Abbey says. “Persons locating and opening the box on campus will find a prize, a log book, and instructions directing them into the library where they will find more treasures by deciphering clues,” she adds.

The Penn State Harrisburg effort has a number of purposes, Abbey points out. “It introduces participants to campus and then to the library and its vast special collections – especially the Alice Marshall Women’s History Collection.” She adds, “There is one more objective – to have fun playing the game. The rules are simple and participants are asked not to disturb the cache, but to take something from it and leave something behind for the next person. And we ask that the persons finding the cache write their experiences in the log book.”

The following poem helps geocachers locate the treasure box:

Near the Library, you can see me prowl,
The beast that makes a might growl.
Look behind the ceramic cat,
To see where the cache is at.

Then, into the Library you should go,
More treasures to find, don’t you know.
Follow the clues found in the box,
You’re free to roam, there are no locks.

Just figure out all three of the clues,
Upstairs, downstairs, you’ve got nothing to lose.
With our Special Collections, you’ll surely see,
Our Library is the coolest place to be!