Thank you for visiting and welcome. My name is Holly Jones and this is my Capstone Project for the   Master of Library and Information Studies program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I received my undergraduate degree at UNCG and went right to work in the social services field. Eventually, I began working in education and had the unique opportunity to co-found and co-direct a STEM homeschool coop. This experience sparked an interest in teaching, reinforced my love for learning and helped put me on the path toward librarianship.  Librarians are unique because the profession requires expertise in social work, education and technology. This blend appeals to me because it requires continual learning, adapting and innovation. Helping others research, find books and sharing my enthusiasm for learning.

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COVID-19 has required all of us to be willing to adapt and provide services in a new way. I imagine this has caused a substantial increase in usage of ebooks and digital resources across the country and will continue to be a preferred mode of acquiring information for some time. This reality led me to my field experience choice which was to learn how to manage, promote, instruct, increase awareness and usage of the digital resources available to patrons at the library. My practicum was done at the High Point Public Library and the goals were to increase circulation and awareness in the digital ebook resources by creating tutorials to access and use these resources,  creating social media posts to highlight collections and tutorials, curated collections featured in the library in print and on Hoopla and NCDL and a libguide.  Specifically, I have been creating customized “collections” on the NCDL, Hoopla,  EBSCOhost, ProQuest eBook Central, SIRS Discoverer and promoting these collections on social media, creating a libguide and Niche Academy tutorials. The focus of the tutorials are to show people how to locate and use each of these collections. Currently many of the digital resources and collections are hidden in the website and very difficult to find. Part of the goal was to promote the resources, however I realized that last year Guilford County Schools partnered with the libraries so that students could use their Guilford County Schools student identification numbers as library card. This is called  GOALS or Guilford Open Access to Libraries to Students and since it was not promoted, I added this information to my tutorials for students and parents. The videos and print instructions covered how to access books; how to use each resource via mobile devices, how to navigate the collections and what types of books each collection has and how to checkout and log in to each resource with the GOALS card and password. Because the majority of the work that I have done in the field experience revolves around education, promotion, curation and awareness, the majority of the Program Learning Outcomes on this page have focused on  PLO 1, 4 AND 7, all of which pertain to communicating and connecting patrons, colleagues and the community to the previously mentioned objectives. 

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The goals of this practicum specifically address childhood literacy and access to information. Promoting the digital resources that are available in different ways will appeal to a wider group of people for example students, teachers, afterschool programs, parents and tutors. Many patrons are not aware how to access the resources, what the resources are for, and that they can use them without coming into the library to set up an account. Finding new opportunities to promote these resources is where I focused my efforts, specifically through social media, an in-person demo, video tutorials, creating flyers and other online promotional tools helped increase awareness and access for patrons and the greater community. Creating digital curations online, promoting them on Facebook posts and in print versions in the library through flyers for Hoopla, Overdrive, SIRS, Proquest and EBSCO were all examples of PLO 01. Promoting our digital collection at the Farmer’s Market with live demonstrations along with creating ebook and digital resource  instructional videos, Niche Academy tutorials, digital and printed instructions for the library website, Facebook and also for display in the Library were all examples of  PLO 1, 4, and 7.

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PLO 1  -The first learning objective, as mentioned above, involved connecting students with information and resources for both leisure and scholarly reading. Limited hours and patron access to the library during my practicum due to COVID 19 resulted in less in-person traffic. The flyers and paper tutorials and instructions I created on the resources and digital databases I was targeting for students was less likely to be seen and picked up by patrons because of the almost non-existant flow of patrons. My other option was to promote the targeted information through Facebook and our website. The goal of creating a just and equitable society in this context was to offer resources and access to information that students are possibly no longer able to access due to schools being closed. The school library may have been a students only available resource to do research, check out books and look for assistance with assignments. Because our library was closed until mid-September we mostly created digital information on library resources, tutorials, videos and messages that would help patrons check out materials, look up information, do research and get heip with language learning and test prep from home. We posted this on the Main Library Facebook page to reach a wider audience and more community members that could spread the word. In addition, our outreach staff shared this information with schools so that teachers and administration could share this with students and parents.  In a broader sense, beyond the scope of my project,  promoting a just and equitable society through the lens of library services and information would require much more planning and work to be effective.  The ALA’s Bill of Rights advocates eliminating censorship, protecting privacy and intellectual freedom by advocating for equal access to information and materials and resources regardless of a person's background status, age or views. More recently, the ALA has adopted numerous policies calling for increased public awareness and policies that assist people experiencing injustice in any form. According to Mathiesen’s article, Informational justice: A conceptual framework for social justice in library and information services,  libraries can and do promote a more just and equitable society by encouraging and promoting diversity in the information professions. Libraries do this by recruiting and supporting people with diverse backgrounds seeking careers and MLS degrees, providing information and resources about social justice, treating people equally and inviting and encouraging participation and collaboration, getting involved with advocacy both locally and on a broader scale to support initiatives and resolutions the advocate for the equitable and fair treatment of people regardless of background. In addition, although libraries provide free and equal access to information not all people can benefit from this access equally either due to monetary, physical, mental or social constraints therefore the transformative roles that libraries play in people’s lives through education and access may not be available for all. According to Mathiesen, information access is less about resource availability and more about changing the conditions to information access either for the person or the type of information that is being offered so that more people can more easily find, utilize and benefit from that information. An assessment of whether information is accessible it is important to determine whether the information is available, easy to find, available to them, easy to understand and usable.  This shift in conceptualizing what information access is and how it can create a more equitable and just society helped me to determine how to go about providing access to information in my practicum. Although my practicum offered information for parents and students on the surface level, going deeper to more effectively deliver equitable access to library students and parents is a worthwhile opportunity to work toward in the future (Matheisen, 2015).

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PLO 4   Effectively communicating and instructing patrons with the end goal of increasing information competence during this practicum involved communication either on social media, the library website or at the library through flyers or in person at our farmer’s market o. The instructions that I provided were through videos, libguides and also social media posts to increase awareness of the digital resources available to students and parents. Last year the county schools allowed students to check out books with their school student identification number. During the last year, checkouts using this method were almost non-existent so one of the videos I created was how students could check out books either online or in person using their school identification number so they would not have to physically come to the library to get a library card. This eliminates the barrier of having a parent bring them to the library, finding their card,  worrying about fines, needing to renew their card or other issues rendering the card unusable. I also created videos on how to find the resources on the library website, how they could help students, and how to access these resources with their student id cards.  Relaying this information to adults through Facebook, at the Farmer’s market in person once a month,  through paper instructions at the library as well as promotion of these videos and instructional tutorials to schools were our main channels of getting this out to the public. Beyond the obvious limitations of the way this information was distributed, it would be worth the effort to take this information to after school programs, churches and other community partners that could disseminate this information directly to the parents and students in the community. This type of community approach would be most effective, though I did not have the time required to take this approach. According to the article, It Takes a Community to Create a Library, one way to achieve the goal of effectively communicating and instructing patrons with the end goal of increasing information competence is to adopt a community-led library service planning model.  A group in Canada developed an initiative called “working together” to engaged thousands of urban, diverse and socially excluded community members. This initiative worked to build relationships by meeting the community either by going door-to-door, attending community events and creating partnerships in the community. This helped to build trust and  respect and opened the door to discovering what the information needs were in the community. The librarians took the approach of collaborating with the community to deliver programs and services that more accurately fit their unique needs (Williment, 2020).

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PLO 7- The last main objective that my practicum focused on communicating and collaborating with colleagues and communities. This objective is crucial to a student and learner, a librarian or anyone in a service field that is interested in making a positive impact in the community. In order to carry out the practicum with my site supervisor, I asked for clarification, checked in with her periodically to ensure that what I was doing was on track with her vision and goals as well as communicating where I was in the process of project completion and whether I needed additional help. Also, my practicum involved creating videos, visual graphics and text that would promote the resources that the library wanted parents and students to utilize. I had to think about how to match my communication with the target community. I also had to consider that I was going to be communicating not only with adults, but possibly with kids that may be trying to follow along with the steps and instructions in accessing the databases and resources. I had to think about the length of the message because a video or tutorial that is too long may not be something the intended audience has time to watch. When coming up with graphics and text, I try to keep my communication cohesive, concise but also something that will appeal to both kids and parents. Also, not using jargon or terminology that is hard for someone not in the library or a specific industry to understand is important because that can be frustrating and confusing.  Communication is vital both in assessing needs, devising an idea or solution and then evaluating with the group whether that idea or solution met the intended needs. Also, communication requires being able to listen, to approach a situation as a collaborator and peer not an expert as well as someone that will listen without bias and be open to new ideas and thoughts. A good communicator is easy to understand and easy to relate to without being judgmental. In the article, Convening Community Conversations it is important to learn how to be an effective facilitator and allow for communication that is open and honest and respectful and practicing “both/and” thinking that lets us see more than one perspective at one time instead of attaching a value to a perspective. Communication that is open can allow for people to agree to disagree because usually people have different opinions and perspectives on things and having open and honest communication can help others to understand those differences (Dixon, 2017).

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In summary, the initial goals of the practicum were increasing awareness and increasing  circulation were met. The results indicated that circulation on the titles that I featured from the Hoopla and Overdrive collections increased, though the NC Live collection circulation could not be determined. The social media posts showed engagement and the niche academy and video tutorials that were featured showed substantial views proving that the efforts from this project were fruitful. The learning outcomes of communicating with peers and community, utilizing instructional strategies to increase information competence and connecting people to information and information technology to promote a just and equitable society were all met, though more outreach needs to be done in the community in order to continue promoting these goals. The inability to quantify GOALS card checkouts and NC Live collection checkouts hampered my ability to fully determine the reach of all of the efforts made on this project. Also, by only promoting the library's digital resources on the private children's Facebook group the potential to reach to the greater community was limited.  Further outreach and marketing is needed to continue spreading awareness and information literacy to the greater community.

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Dixon, J. A. (2017). Convening Community Conversations. Library Journal, 142(17), 41–44.

Retrieved on November 7, 2020 from https://login.libproxy.uncg.edu/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=125690766&site=ehost-live

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Mathiesen, K. (2015). Informational justice: A conceptual framework for social justice in

library and information services. Library Trends, 64(2), 198-225. Retrieved on November 7, 2020 from  doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lib.2015.0044 

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Williment, Ken. 2020. It Takes a Community to Create a Library. Public Library Quarterly

39(5):410–20. Retrieved on November 7, 2020 from doi-org.libproxy.uncg.edu/10.1080/01616846.2019.1590757