iSchool Capstone

Lives Change @ Your Library

Project tags:

content & digital asset management

The Bellingham Public Library offers community connection through programs, but the experience is fleeting. Patrons repeatedly request recordings of library events. Lives Change @ Your Library is a pilot program that digitally captures patron interviews so that people can access this local oral history at any time through the library website. Interviews focus on how libraries have transformed the lives of eight library patrons. Outreach and interviews occurred over three months. Patrons were all volunteers with an age range of twenty-one to eighty-seven. Four men and four women participated. Some of the topics raised were homelessness, adoption, physical disability, loss of a spouse, loss of a job, finding work, being inspired, and being empowered to find one’s own answers. It’s a way for patrons to share patron created content with each other as well as providing data to library staff members on what resources might be required for future projects.

Project participants:

Suzanne Carlson-Prandini

MLIS