Team 2's Digital Engagement Project

A collaboration between the University of Iowa's "Museums in a Digital World" course, the Kendall Young Library, and the Iowa Initiatives for Sustainable Communities

Introduction to the Project

Hello, and welcome to our Project Site!

This project is a partnership between the Iowa Initiatives for Sustainable Communities (IISC), students from the University of Iowa’s “Museums in a Digital World” course, and the staff at the Kendall Young Library. The IISC is a “campus-wide community engaged learning organization” based on the University of Iowa (UI) campus. The IISC links different students, faculty, and staff members with different rural and urban communities to complete the project such as this one. These projects are real-world, high-impact collaborations that benefit both the communities as well as the students. The Kendall Young Library (KYL), on the other hand, is an institution located in Webster City, Iowa, and has been partnered with the “Museums in a Digital World” course by the IISC. KYL’s background will be explained in greater depth in the following section. The “Museums in a Digital World” course is an online class at the UI that aims to explain the many potential uses of digital technologies for museums and the different digitized strategies and systems that equalize museum access and enhance visitor experiences. Team 2, the group that made this Project Site, is composed of two students from the "Museums in a Digital World" class.

Project Overview

Throughout the semester, students in the “Museums in a Digital World” course examined a wide variety of different digital and online strategies. UI students, then, worked in different groups to create digital and online methods of visitor engagement that will increase KYL’s audience’s participation and raise awareness of the significant resources available at the library. The digital and online content for KYL that the UI students created was detailed in an interpretive plan for KYL first, before the content was created, based on the research gathered and compiled in the plan. After creating different digital and online content for KYL on platforms such as ThingLink, Facebook, VoiceThread, and Twitter, students created a website such as this one on which they explain their efforts for KYL throughout the semester and the results of such efforts.

Project Goals

One of the main goals of the project includes successful working and communicating both as a team within the UI community and as partners with outside organizations such as KYL and IISC. Additionally, we hope to strengthen our researching skills as we learn more about KYL and its collections, and as a result, better understand the relationship between digital technologies and museums and libraries. Finally, we aim to more fully develop our written and spoken communication skills to create content for KYL that will more fully transmit their institution’s goals and messages to their Webster City audiences.

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