LIS 7230 Services for Children and Young Adults 

“Through this project, we learned that grant writing and project planning go hand in hand. Planning starts early, and you have to be thorough. We will definitely be taking this knowledge into our Librarian careers!” - Beth

LIS 7530 - Web Design & Accessibility 

“[This website] grew out of a project I created while working as a Graduate Assistant at the St. Kate’s library. We were exploring ways to engage students and faculty over the summer, and I kept returning to the idea of bird identification. During my undergraduate ornithology course, I loved learning to identify the birds I saw and I wanted to share that experience. As a disabled person, accessibility is always at the forefront of my work, and birding is one of the most accessible ways to connect with nature—it only requires patience. Expanding my original project into a full website felt like the perfect way to make birding simple, approachable, and accessible to anyone.” - Jessy 

LIS 7530 - Web Design & Accessibility 

“The purpose of my website is to familiarize students, faculty, and staff working in academic contexts, such as colleges and universities, with popular generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) tools and their applications. With the speed with which Gen AI is being developed, countless opportunities exist to use it for assistance with writing, research, teaching, and presentation tasks. While Gen AI can be helpful with drafting outlines, copy editing, summarizing research, and translating the content of written materials, it is less effective in assisting individuals with inquiries that require previous knowledge of a topic or the creation of something that requires original thought. Gen AI has also been known to generate fake data or information with bias. In light of the complexities of Gen AI, college and university students, faculty, and staff are in need of guidelines on its various uses. To address this need, I researched fourteen popular Gen AI tools, then populated my website with information about their strengths and weaknesses. On my site, I also included guidelines for craft prompting as well as citation guidelines for referencing the outputs of Gen AI in academic work. My site also includes video tutorials about the uses of each of the AI tools as well as news articles and other reading material about the future of Gen AI and its impact on the world. My hope is that my site will serve as a resource for individuals curious about Gen AI and its evolving relationship to academic contexts.” - Nick 

LIS 8810 - Advanced Archival Management

"Advanced Archival Management (LIS 8810) with Heather Carroll provided an opportunity to conduct a semester-long research project focused on creating a fictitious yet plausible archival institution. It required researching and conceptualizing all aspects of an archive from start to finish. From the idea—What sort of archive doesn’t currently exist, but should or could?—to where it would be located, how it would be staffed and marketed, to the collection management policy and budget. This assignment revealed gaps in my knowledge—How much does it cost to build a space to house an archive?—and forced me to think realistically about what it takes to preserve history and share it with the public—It costs THAT MUCH to build an archive space? It costs THAT MUCH to staff it? This deep-dive research gave me a greater understanding of the planning, strategy and funding required to establish an archive and an appreciation for what goes into the ongoing support of these learning repositories." - Melissa