ALA Competency 1: Foundations of the Profession
INFO 5375: Final Project - Completed November 2020
The point of this project was to create an educational resource that could be used to teach patrons about a particular aspect of archival practice and highlight the importance of archival work. For this project, I chose to talk about motion picture appraisal and how archives decide what films get preserved and why it is a difficult question.
This project primarily consisted of me doing research and
then synthesizing that research down into the most important information that I
wanted to get across to the reader. Most importantly, I had to find visual
examples of the things I was going to talk about so that I could better
represent the ideas to the user. There is a section where I talk about vinegar
syndrome, and I needed to find a good picture to show readers how it effects
old film stock. I wanted to get across why it is important that we digitize
materials quickly and how we store film properly. Through this project, I got
to explore the history of the archival profession and learn about how archival
practice has developed over the years. This project applies to this core
competency because it shows that I can explain the importance of archival
practice and that I can present information on the history of librarianship and
how it has developed over time.
INFO 5400: Privacy, Censorship, and Government Legislation Assignment - Completed April 25, 2022
The purpose of this assignment was for us to research the relationships between libraries and privacy, censorship, and government legislation. We had to examine these relationships and write about how libraries are and should respond to the challenges they present.
This assignment was an eye-opening experience because it taught me a lot about how privacy concerns and censorship impact libraries and what they are and not able to do. I was already aware of the important role that libraries played in supporting intellectual freedom, but this assignment highlighted why that role is becoming increasingly important. There have always been movements to censor what works are available in public libraries, but this assignment made me aware of how troubling this problem has become in the past few years. Through my research for this project, I have learned the best ways to respond to censorship challenges and who I can go to for help if my institution is targeted by these complaints. I think this assignment fits into this core competency because it taught me about the role of information professionals and libraries in promotion of democratic principles and intellectual freedom. It also highlighted some of national trends and legal frameworks that libraries and information agencies are operating under.