Posters will be available throughout the day. Presenters will be available to discuss their posters during the lunch break, 1:00—1:45 p.m.

Leveraging Data and Lessons Learned: The Story of the Framework Foibles and Fiesta by Marianne Giltrud, Prince George’s Community College

Innovative pedagogy when combined with educational technology facilitate learning, retention and knowledge transfer. When seen through the lens of constructivist learning models that aligns instruction with real world problems, the students’ ability to retain what they learn and more importantly transfer their knowledge to other disciplines increase.  This case study follows a community college’s two pronged approach to improving student learning outcomes.

First, the library embarked on its first assessment of information literacy instruction using an information literacy pre-and post-test. This tool was designed mapped to student learning outcomes, ACRL Framework, performance indicators and outcomes rubric for learning. Pre-and post-test beta testing occurred in five English 1010 courses. Full implementation tested 50% of information literacy sessions to obtain baseline learning outcomes. The next phase built on assessment data to improve not only instruction but also student learning outcomes.

Secondly, in order improve critical thinking and information literacy student core competencies, a cadre of interactive videos were designed using narrative and storytelling as tools to enhance retention and knowledge transfer.  These instructional videos with embedded quizzes were designed, developed, implemented and evaluated to provide a framework for ongoing assessment. Case study results, lessons learned and next steps are provided to substantiate and advance critical thinking and learning.

Searching for Buried Treasure: Teaching Archival Research Skills to Archaeologists by Rebecca Katz, District of Columbia Office of Public Records

How does an archivist introduce archives and archival research to undergraduate students interested in pursuing a career in archaeology? I faced this question during the summer of 2017 when I was asked to host a group of six aspiring archaeologists at the DC Archives. The only focus I had was that the students were working at Cedar Hill, the home of Frederick Douglass. I was asked to make the visit relevant to that project, if possible.

This poster examines the curriculum I developed for the students, highlighting the similarities between the search for “treasure” at an archaeological dig and the search for historical nuggets of gold in an archives. Beginning with secondary source research to identify a place to start “digging,” the students sifted through metaphorical dirt and ultimately found their treasure: the deed to Cedar Hill.

The Development and Management of Photographic Records: An Examination of Special Olympics’ Care and Keeping of Organizational Photographs from the Mid-Twentieth Century to Present by Emily Hewitt, Catholic University of America

I intend to explore the history of photographic records, and the best practices used to store and care for those records from the nineteenth century to the present. I am currently working at Special Olympics headquarters in Washington, D.C. in conjunction with CUA and I am working under the guidance of Dr. Zhang. I plan to focus a large portion of my paper on the ways in which Special Olympics headquarters has kept and cared for their photographic records from the 1960s to the present. I plan to include research on the management and care of slides, negatives, and standard printed photographs, and I want to explore how the management of photographic records has changed with the invention of digital photography.

Box X; Folder “ ” by Juan-Pablo Gonzalez, Catholic University of America

Box X, Folder "  " is a project that meditates on the archive as an artistic medium of performative expression that presents the theatrics of the racial imagination on a center stage. It recaptures history by decolonizing the prescriptive nature of the Western archival system through remix practice. The empty quotations for the item-level description demand that the viewers name each folder as they see fit and calls upon the viewer to challenge the sanitation that has characterized how memory is experienced in the institutionalized archival setting. I excerpted documents from archival materials found at The Catholic University of America’s archives by selecting salient text for removal from the context in which it was originally created, to compose a new semiotic expression that disrupts the orderly syntax of the document. The new textual form engenders the permutation of our cognition of the past and challenges thought with this new vernacular. The viewer is asked to explore the decontextualization by devising their own description of the contents of each folder; after examining the contents of each folder, the viewers are then asked to return to the "X" in "Box X" to name the entire collection. The architecture of colonial infrahumanization narratives and the accompanying cataloguing, classification, and description of those narratives is problematized and dismantled by the audience’s lingering gaze at undistilled history.

Changing Needs, Shifting Strategies: AGLISS Since Fall 2015 by Hannah Jones, Mary Catherine Matta, and Victoria Pohlen, Catholic University of America

Since its revival as an active student organization in Fall 2015, the Association of Graduate Library and Information Science Students (AGLISS) has been seeking to serve the graduate student population of CUA's Library and Information Science program. Over its three-year stint, the organization has done so by focusing its efforts primarily in three core areas: namely, professional development, dues and fees reimbursement, and community building through social programs. However, while these main goals have remained consistent throughout the past three years, the approaches and strategies that AGLISS officers have employed have changed significantly, in response to student needs and other external influences. Thus, we can say that AGLISS has grown with the department and has changed as its constituents' needs change. Today, AGLISS continues to evaluate the success of their efforts to promote student success, and its officers hope to share the fruits of that self-evaluation in a presentation for the 2018 Bridging the Spectrum Symposium.

Our presentation will build on the analysis we began for the 2017 symposium; combining both statistical and anecdotal evidence from the 2015-2016, 2016-2017, and the current academic year, we will examine how AGLISS' leadership strategies have changed to cater to shifts in student needs and departmental conditions. Based on this, we will offer some insights into best practices for student-led organizations looking to support graduate LIS students.

The Problem Patron, The Problem Student by Kimball Fontein, Catholic University of America

Society today looks at any situation outside of the norm as a problem. This gets exacerbated in the library setting, where people expect a quiet place to complete work. Noisy teenagers, sleeping homeless men and upset mothers are seen as issues rather than patrons. These people need to be seen as patrons. The only research on this problem patron phenomenon is a comparison between problem patrons at a library and problem patients at a hospital, which fails to compare. The comparison needs to change to problem students in the classroom. In the classroom setting, students are not the problem; the classroom environment, the instructional practices and issues outside of the students’ control are the problems. Thus, the classroom changes to adapt to the students’ needs. Public libraries need to use the classroom as an example. Instead of the people needing to change, the mindset of librarians and library users need to change to be more welcoming and accepting of all patrons. Only then will the patron be seen as a patron and never a problem.

From the Mixed-Up Files of Fandom: The Tagging of an Archive by Babak Zarin, Catholic University of America

In today’s world the rise of media storage and hosting capacities online has resulted in users often creating their own collections and curation systems, many of which do not incorporate the formal understandings information specialists have. This leads to a basic but complex question: How should information specialists best curate and make accessible collections for users as collections become increasingly maintained by the users themselves? This poster will offer initial thoughts regarding future best practices for information specialists engaging with folksonomies based on an in-depth examination of the strengths and weaknesses of the folksonomy used by The Archive of Our Own, a “fan-created, fan-run, non-profit, non-commercial archive for transformative fanworks,” that boasts a collection of over 3.3 million works.

The Law Librarian & The Self-Represented Litigant: Innovative Service Models by Ashley Matthews, Catholic University of America

According to the Legal Service Corporation's 2017 Justice Gap Report, 86% of the civil legal problems experienced by low-income Americans received inadequate or no legal help. When many of these pro se litigants are in desperate need of legal information, they turn to law libraries. This study will reflect on the results of interviews with public law librarians to identify innovative service trends and best practices in providing access to information for self-represented litigants. This poster will help viewers gain an understanding of future legal information delivery models adopted by law libraries to better serve public patrons.