Elizabeth Allen is a full time Youth Services Librarian at Middle Country Public Library in Suffolk County, NY, where she encourages civic participation among teens through the monthly Zine Club. She is passionate about inspiring young people to find their voices and actively contribute to their communities. Through this research project Elizabeth hopes to encourage librarians everywhere to advocate for youth civic literacy programs. Elizabeth is also the recipient of the 2018 Suffolk County Library Association Scholarship, the Fall 2018 Luigi Lemoncello Scholarship, and the co-recipient of the 2018 Suffolk County Library Association's Best Overall Teen Program Award for The Zine Project. Proposal excerpt:

"In response to the growing relevancy of civic literacy in teens' lives, this research will seek to answer the following questions: what is civic literacy and why is it important to adolescent education and development? Are public libraries offering programs and services to develop civic literacy among teens? To what extent should a public library involve itself in developing civic literacy among teens?"

Sam Bercovich was born and raised in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn but currently lives in Westchester County. He resigned from his work at the NYCDOE pursue a career in library science and hopes to one day get his PhD in history. His interest in the Archives and Preservation certificate comes from wanting to be part of a profession that enables him to preserve cultural and historical documents for posterity. During his work as a teacher, he amassed a great deal of knowledge about youth literacy and he started wondering about archives and their relationship to public schools. For example, if NYCDOE schools kept a researchable public archive of their literacy curriculum. This questioning about youth literacy and archives became personal: at every public school he ever worked at, there was no evidence of recorded literacy documentation of years prior, either housed in a physical archive or stored online. Because of this near absence of a school’s literacy past, he was compelled to research how keeping an archive can potentially help schools have more youth literacy success.Proposal excerpt:"The intersection between youth literacy programs in a school and the need to archive and preserve a school's literacy history has a profound impact on the achievement and success of all K-12 students, most notably those that are disadvantaged. Literacy programs should be based on a conscientious dissection of a school's personal culture to ensure the best possible results and methods for its population. My first short-term goal is to fill a research gap that is presently needed in the investigation of archives and their importance within public school literacy programs."