DLF Forum Community Journalist Reflection: Carolina Hernandez - DLF CLIR Fellowships & Grants DLF Publications CLIR Global Join Give CLIR Programs Digital Library Federation DLF Forum Digital Library of the Middle East Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives Recordings at Risk Mellon Fellowships for Dissertation Research Leading Change Institute DLF eResearch Network Postdoctoral Fellowship Program DLF Digital Library Federation Toggle navigation About About DLF Our Staff Our Members Governance DLF Code of Conduct Events DLF Year-Round 2020 Forum: Online Past Forums DLF Forum News Social Events Checklist Child Care Fund Resources DLF Organizers’ Toolkit Blog and News #DLFcontribute Series Digitizing Special Formats DLF Cost Calculator DLF Jobs Board Groups DLF Working Groups CLIR/DLF Affiliates DLF Membership Cohorts Get Involved with Groups Opportunities Grants and Fellowships Authenticity Project DLF Community Calendar Data Curation Postdocs Community/Capacity Awards Post a Job/Find a Job Contact Get in Touch Stay Connected Join DLF Our Members Benefits DLF Digital Library Federation Toggle navigation About About DLF Our Staff Our Members Governance DLF Code of Conduct Events DLF Year-Round 2020 Forum: Online Past Forums DLF Forum News Social Events Checklist Child Care Fund Resources DLF Organizers’ Toolkit Blog and News #DLFcontribute Series Digitizing Special Formats DLF Cost Calculator DLF Jobs Board Groups DLF Working Groups CLIR/DLF Affiliates DLF Membership Cohorts Get Involved with Groups Opportunities Grants and Fellowships Authenticity Project DLF Community Calendar Data Curation Postdocs Community/Capacity Awards Post a Job/Find a Job Contact Get in Touch Stay Connected Join DLF Our Members Benefits DLF Forum Community Journalist Reflection: Carolina Hernandez December 11, 2020 Gayle Community, DLF Forum News, Forum Fellows This post was written by Carolina Hernandez (@carolina_hrndz), who was selected to be one of this year’s virtual DLF Forum Community Journalists. Carolina Hernandez is currently an Instruction Librarian at the University of Houston where she collaborates on creating inclusive learning environments for students. Previously, she was the Journalism Librarian at the University of Oregon, where she co-managed the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program. Her MLIS is from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her current research interests are in critical information literacy, inclusive pedagogy, and most recently, the intersection of digital collections and pedagogy.  I have been interested in attending the DLF Forum for a few years now, but the timing was never quite right until this year. With the conference being both online and free, it was a no brainer for me to finally attend. Considering I am an Instruction Librarian, though, it may seem like an odd choice for me. However, in part because of my previous experience with curating the Oregon Digital Newspaper Project at the University of Oregon, I’ve been interested in exploring the many ways digital library technologies and digital collections themselves can be incorporated into information literacy instruction. With COVID-19 entirely moving our instruction to the online realm, this interest has become an imperative. This conference has confirmed for me that there are many ways these areas intersect and could inform my instructional approach. While many of the sessions I watched did not directly address pedagogy, there was still so much I was able to glean from the presentations that I could take back to my realm. The main thing that popped out at me was the way so many presenters addressed accessibility in one way or another. Of course, this stood out the most with the “Creating Accessible and Inclusive Content” combo session, which began with Rebecca Bayeck’s clarification of the difference between accessibility and inclusivity, two terms that are often used interchangeably. While accessibility is more about making sure that the final product is “usable by people with all abilities,” Bayeck made the important distinction that inclusivity goes a step beyond that to also make sure individuals “feel comfortable/safe when using [it].” This is something I try to keep in mind when lesson planning, how it’s important to not only make sure that students are able to access the learning materials in whatever way works best for them, but that they also find the relevance of information literacy to their own lives. In another presentation from this session, Daniella Levy-Pinto and Mark Weiler noted some of these issues, such as “unlabeled buttons or links,” which can be hard to identify properly for those using screen readers. In fact, several presenters and attendees emphasized the importance of testing platforms and content with screen readers. Carli Spina also spoke about the importance of including audio descriptions and transcripts for audio-video content and also mentioned specific tools, such as CADET, that can help create these necessary points of access. CADET, or Caption and Description Editing Tool, is free and allows you to create captions and timed scripts, but it can also be used to more easily add audio descriptions.  Screenshot of the CADET interface. Image credit: Carli Spina It was helpful to see some of these accessibility best practices in action via the conference itself. Because presentations were recorded in advance, they were able to include both closed captioning and transcripts for each one. Conference coordinators encouraged attendees to make their postings in Slack accessible as well by including image descriptions whenever a picture was included. This emphasized for me how it’s not only important to create accessible learning materials, but to foster a community that encourages others to follow suit. It is a helpful model for my instruction team as we move forward with helping our liaison colleagues with their own instruction. As I’ve been considering how to build lesson plans and activities around digital collections, the other session that stood out to me was the panel “US Latino DH: Recovering the Past, Creating the Future.” The presenters Gabriela Baeza Ventura, Carolina Villarroel, Linda Garcia Merchant, and Lorena Gauthereau spoke about the US Latino Digital Humanities Program based at the University of Houston, my current institution. This made their work immediately relevant to mine, as they are already working with part of the same community I teach. What stood out to me most, though, was their use of “Omeka as Pedagogy.” Baeza Ventura talked about her specific experience with teaching an undergraduate class wherein students used Omeka to curate an exhibit, thus allowing them to “contribute to knowledge production.” This Freirean approach to teaching is very much in line with our instruction team’s programmatic information literacy outcomes, which focus on encouraging students to see themselves as information creators. With a lot about the coming year still up in the air, my team and I plan to continue our efforts to strengthen both the synchronous and asynchronous online learning content we offer as it seems likely the demand for online teaching will certainly not go away. I am looking forward to bringing a lot of these ideas from the DLF community back to my department and finding ways to incorporate them into our pedagogy. Related Previous Next   What's the DLF? networked member institutions and a robust community of practice—advancing research, learning, social justice, & the public good through the creative design and wise application of digital library technologies Contact CLIR+DLF c/o WeWork (CLIR) 12th Floor 2221 South Clark Street Arlington, VA 22202 E: info@diglib.org Elsewhere Twitter Facebook LinkedIn YouTube Email RSS Community Calendar #DLFteach Twitter Chat December 15, 2020 at 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm More info at https://wiki.diglib.org/Pedagogy Discovering Wesselmann - Virtual Event on Archives and CR Research December 16, 2020 at 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm Discovering Wesselmann: A Webinar from the WPIOn December 16th, the Wildenstein Platter Institute will host a conversation between our archivist, Samantha Rowe, and the project manager for the Tom Wesselmann Catalogue Raisonné, Huffa Frobes-Cross. Looking at the Tom Wesselmann Papers and the artist’s work, Huffa and Samantha will discuss how archival research intersects with and supports the development of this catalogué raisonne project. The role of… DCMI Open Meeting on Application Profiles December 17, 2020 at 11:00 am – 12:00 pm Online DCMI Open Meeting on Application ProfilesDecember 17 - 16:00 UTC (8am PST, 11am EST, 5pm CET)Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is holding an open meeting to discuss a new work product, a specification for tabular application profiles.Many communities today create application profiles (APs) for their data. However, we lack a standard that would help those… More events & links here. On Twitter “As a first-time #DLFforum participant, I am grateful to have been able to participate in this year’s virtual forum… https://t.co/UPg23pbSFS18 hours ago Want to talk pedagogy and how it went in 2020? Need ideas for 2021? Talk with us tomorrow, Tuesday, December 15, at… https://t.co/qgi2SwZs7r20 hours ago Libraries, archives, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning: the Job Board is the place to find… https://t.co/WjnL4LruC222 hours ago Unless otherwise indicated, content on this site is available for re-use under CC BY-SA 4.0 License CLIR