Pasadena City College offers a Library Technology Certificate Program which prepares students for Library Paraprofessional positions in all types of libraries. Currently, the required coursework includes introductory classes to library services like reference, access, and technical services. As a former participant of this program, I saw an opportunity to design lesson plans and assignments within the courses offered that incorporate digital storytelling and instructional design concepts. The curricular content developed for this project will help students learn practical skills to design digital resources and apply strategies for storytelling that create personal connections, regardless of their role in a library.

The Teen Meme Privacy Project set out to address particular ways in which privacy and surveillance impact youth, complicated by intersections of their sociopolitical identities. We committed to acknowledge the reality of systems of power in their lives – such as white supremacy, capitalism, and heteropatriarchy. By honestly and unequivocally engaging these within the context of their lived experiences, we worked with our Teen Advisory Board to create relevant, authentic, and impactful shareable material, and fill the need for a robust set of privacy resources made just for teens, on topics they care about, in language and formats they use.

East Asian libraries in the United States were born from the rise of Asian studies. Today, given the challenges of the outbreak of COVID-19, hate crimes against the Asian community, and the suspension of international trips, East Asian libraries must figure out new ways to provide their services and access to collections. This project is sponsored by UW's Tateuchi East Asia Library, aimed at understanding the information needs of the community and increasing its influence and visibility to continue providing effective information support for scholars and students in the new reality.

At Highline College Library, systematic assessment of one-shot information literacy sessions has not been prioritized due to the busy nature of community college librarianship. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has been at the forefront of instruction at Highline, so we set out to bring the two together in a practical way that could be implemented by providing assessment tools and EDI checklists. We worked to find resources through an environmental scan that Highline librarians could use to ensure instruction is serving the needs of all of their students, regardless of background.

Refugees seeking refuge within the United States are denied entry due to government policies. Currently there are 1.4 million refugees who need resettlement and 37,000 people are forced to leave their homes everyday. The current atmosphere allows for misinformation about refugees to persist and denies refugees accurate representation and recognition. Our solution is a free web-based, open-access information source that educates users on issues and policies concerning refugees while providing them with a holistic range of information. Castaway enables people to identify the problem, gives them the tools to learn and encourages them to take action as advocates.

Documents reflect the historical contexts of their creation, and in doing so, become information objects. The serial novel is a type of information object, but due to re-editioning, reversioning, and digitization, most readers have lost touch with its historical significance. This analysis of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield (1849–1850) uses the lens of information theory, in relation to literary criticism, historiography, and the history of the book, to grasp the serial novel as an information object, arguing that doing so requires intimate familiarity with the physical nature of the book in parts and the historical context of its production.

From developing news stories to fake news, satirical posts to outright deceitful information, there is a lot of misinformation out there. For students and young adults, it can be difficult to understand how these revolve around your life and how they impact you. Alongside the Center for an Informed Public, we set out to build a supplemental educational platform that teaches high school and college-age students about how misinformation impacts their life in an interactive, reflective, and engaging way.

Developing data literacy skills at a young age can dramatically improve workforce preparedness. However, not all middle schoolers are being taught data literacy. Through our user research, we learned that students are much more likely to learn these important skills if the data being used is directly related to their daily lives. Therefore, our team created Data Diary, a tool that helps build data visualizations that use data that is directly based on student-provided data. Data Diary teaches data literacy by gamifying the process of data collection and data analysis to increase student interest and participation.

As technology continues to integrate into everyday life, data is becoming a normal part of library staff workflows. However, the technical skills needed to efficiently use this valuable data are not necessarily a part of current library staff training. To help fill this skill gap, two 1.5-hour workshops on Tidy Data and the tool OpenRefine and plans for a third workshop on Python were developed. These workshops introduce best practices for structuring and cleaning data in spreadsheets for further analysis. Using skills learned in these workshops, library staff can work with data more efficiently and finish projects faster and easier.

The ability to read, analyze, and question data is becoming so crucial in today’s workforce and is considered a 21st century technical skill across all industries. However, our current education systems utilize traditional curriculum methods that fail to provide students with the comprehensive skills to interact with digital information. Data Viz Kids is a free interactive and interdisciplinary curriculum for middle school teachers to educate and bring data literacy into classrooms. Through the five modules, teachers will cover a wide range of data literacy skills in order to better prepare their students for higher education and the workforce.