SILS students share work and research at 2019 Project Fair

SILS hosted its fifth annual Project Fair, showcasing the work of graduate and undergraduate students, on April 17 in Manning Hall. Four projects received special recognition: • The Best Project Award, chosen by a faculty panel of judges, was presented to Yukun Yang for his project titled “Dumping the Closet Skeletons

Online: Guilty Information Disclosure Behavior on Social Media.” • The People’s Choice Award, sponsored by

LAUNC-CH and chosen by project fair attendees, was presented to Caleece Nash for her project titled “Is Mobile Work Really Location-Independent? The Role of Space in the Work of Digital

Nomads.” • The Community Impact Award, chosen by a faculty panel of judges, was presented to

Rachel~Anne Spencer for her project titled

“Creating Friendly Handouts: Towards More

Accessible Materials in Digital Literacy Instruction” and Nadia Clifton for her project titled

“Special Tours for Special Collections: 360-Degree

Virtual Tours for Library Accessibility.”

SILS Professor Cal Lee praised participants at the end of the fair. “Not only were the projects and research really impressive, your ability to articulate your work and findings were excellent,” he said. “That’s not something you always encounter, even at professional conferences.”

MSIS student Yukun Yang discusses his research at the fair.

Nadia Clifton explains her virtual tour of Wilson Library at the Project Fair to SILS Assistant Professor Maggie Melo and another guest.

Disability informatics lectures available online

As part of her spring 2019 “Disability Informatics and Information” course, SILS Assistant Professor Amelia Gibson hosted a series of guest lectures on topics such as disability and the law, designing assistive technology, and library services for people with disabilities.

The talks were open to the public and are now available on the Community Engaged Disability Informatics (CEDI) lab website, cedi.web.unc.edu.

The lecture series was made possible by an Institute of Museum and Library Services grant that Gibson received in 2017 for her project “Deconstructing Information Poverty: Identifying, Supporting, and Leveraging Local Expertise in Marginalized Communities.”

“As I’ve been conducting research for the project, I’ve been hearing from many librarians who have been tasked with creating programs for people with disabilities, but who have had no training or guidance on how to develop that programming,” Gibson said. “I hope these lectures might give librarians in that situation a place to start.”

Nadia Clifton (MSLS ‘19) creates virtual tour to help library visitors feel more welcome

Having worked as a research assistant in Wilson Library since she arrived at Carolina, Nadia Clifton viewed the building as her “home base” on campus, but she knew not everyone felt as welcome when they first arrived. The marble floors, stone columns, wood-paneled walls, and security station can be a little intimidating for new visitors.

To help improve that initial experience, Clifton created a 360-degree virtual tour of the library.

“The project came out of a class about disability informatics, but I hope it will be useful for everybody, including people who have a lot of anxiety about being in new places,” she said. “I want people to feel comfortable in the space before they even get there.”

The project will also help people with disabilities identify accessible entrances, automatic doors, and elevators.

Clifton graduated with her MSLS and Diversity Advocate Certificate in May. While at SILS, she was an Association of Research Libraries/Society of American Archivists Mosaic Fellow, interning in Wilson Library’s Rare Book Collection

University Libraries appointed Clifton the Special Collections Engagement Librarian for Wilson Library in August. In this position, she will help ensure an excellent visitor experience for all users and develop programs that will share Wilson Library’s resources with communities on campus, in North Carolina, and beyond. Adapted from a story by Emilie Poplett, University Communications.