SLO 4: The student designs services to meet the information needs of all users and communities.
At first consideration the notion of designing services to meet the needs of all users seems both daunting and impossible. One of the greatest skills we learn in our program is the ability to assess our user populations efficiently and determine the right resource for the task. Throughout this program I have had the benefit of working on a variety of assignment designed to meet the needs of both users and communities. These projects included digital collections, websites, lesson plans, and tutorials. I have chosen two very different learning experiences to discuss further.
In LIS 620 (Information Services and Sources) with Dr. Jim Carmichael, I created my first LibGuide. For the purposes of this assignment we could choose any topic to be the subject of our LibGuide. I wanted to explore something I found personally interesting, unique and fun. I chose to take a deeper look at the history of British automobiles. I had no prior experience with LibGuides leading into this class. I was amazed with variety of LibGuides that already exist and the amount of information they can contain. As I approached my own tool, I was almost overwhelmed with the organizational possibilities. While I have a love for both history and cars, I wanted to create a resource that was useful to those topics separately and combined. I also wanted it to be visually appealing to showcase the unique beauty of some of the automobiles. I chose to divide my LibGuide into subtopics including: Politics & Economy, Manufacturers & Designers, Motorsports and Clubs & Culture. The final LibGuide provides access to books, articles, and websites as well as some general information to assist in searching. While this guide has a very specific and unique focus, the experience of creating it has been tremendously valuable. LibGuides are exceptional tools. It is an advantage to not only be familiar with them as a user but also a creator.
I have been particularly interested in the areas of archives and special collections throughout my coursework. That interest in archives lead me to take LIS 688 (Archives Management) with Jennifer Motszko. During this course I conducted a collection processing assessment from an archival repository with the goal of evaluating the current arrangement and intellectually rearranging the collection based on those findings. I chose to work with the Alice Lindsay Tate Papers from the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. This was my first experience examining archival documents with a specific consideration of how others would view them. It was an illuminating experience that gave me a better understanding of the unique challenges of archival organization. I have since gone on to volunteer my time to the Special Collections & University Archives at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. In my time there I have processed and provided organization for collection that is now being digitized.