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Emergencies can create situations where traditional face-to-face courses need to quickly be transferred to be online. When transitioning, it is easy to focus on simply moving content into an online learning management system quickly and training instructors and students in the basics of how to use the platform in a pared-down learning structure. However, this article argues that approaching emergency course redesign with accessibility in mind at the start of the transition will ensure that more students, including students with disabilities, succeed in the online learning environment. This also helps ensure the course is designed for optimal student learning outcomes.

The University of South Carolina’s Knowledge School has a commitment. The commitment: Everyone. Everywhere. Every time. The “Knowledge School” is about empowerment. It is about accessing abilities in everyone. It is about using abilities to ensure knowledge creation. And it is about using abilities to ensure equity. This chapter defines a philosophy rooted in tenets of universal access and design. It then highlights several initiatives in teaching, research, and service that put the philosophy into action.

Research indicates that technological advances are changing the ways people are searching for, finding, and using information for personal, professional, and educational purposes (Bernier, 2007; Heath, 2007; Perrault, 2007). Human information behavior encompasses people’s information needs, information seeking behaviors, information contexts, patterns of information access, retrieval, processing,and use (Todd, 2003). An emerging area of human information behavior is the information seeking practices of youth. Research suggests the need for educators to adapt instruction and refine students’ Information Seeking skills and foster advanced information literacy (Branch, 2003; Dixon & Shenton, 2005; Kulthau, 1994, 2003; Hultgren and Limberg, 2002; Laverty, 2003; Leu and Kinzer, 2000; and McGregor, 1994).

When we incorporate diversity and inclusion into Library and Information Science course design and content and build communication and learning frameworks in the classroom on inclusive principles, we build a cohort of students who cannot “unsee” these basic principles as they engage in practice. By designing lecture and activity materials that allow students to read and engage with different perspectives about professional values and content, we create opportunities for awareness building and prepare students to engage with the same practices as they join the profession. This chapter provides insights for and examples of how to create courses that bring diversity, equity, and inclusion into its very design.

Literacy and literacy skill development remain critical concerns in the U.S. “Two of every three students in the U.S. do not have the necessary reading proficiencies to successfully complete grade-level work” (Allington, 2011). Camp Read-a-Rama, a summer day camp in South Carolina for 4- to 11-year-olds, creates innovative programming using children’s literature as the springboard for all camp activities. Activities connect with and reinforce concepts in children’s literature, thereby helping children learn to “live books” and understand connections between their reading and their lives. For six summers (2009–2014), Camp Read-a-Rama has provided fully-engaged, week-long themed literacy immersion experiences that seek to turn “summer slide” into “summer stride.” The purposes of this longitudinal, mixed methods study were: (1) to ascertain the impact of Camp Read-a-Rama’s interventions on helping children develop positive attitudes toward reading; and (2) to determine best practices for literacy skill programming with children in libraries and the communities libraries serve. Findings offer compelling evidence that strategies employed through Camp Read-a-Rama programming positively impacted children’s attitudes toward reading and their interactions with books, a critical step in literacy skill development and improvement. Analysis of parent/guardian evaluations revealed the following emerging themes as perceived impacts of Camp Read-a-Rama programming upon campers: increased love and enthusiasm for reading, improved reading and listening skills, and a belief that camp activities create a deeper understanding of books and vice versa. Findings suggest that integrating literacy skill instruction and programming into LIS curricula could better prepare librarians and LIS professionals to have a greater impact on literacy skill development among the children they serve.

This conceptual paper will discuss how faculty from The School of Library and Information Science at The University of South Carolina partnered with their university’s Center for Teaching Excellence. This partnership resulted in the facilitation of professional development workshops and online tools for peer educators to better serve distance education/online students who are differently-able (students who are medically or socially labeled as having disabilities). National-level online instruction standards, instructional techniques, as well as outcomes and future plans will be discussed.

Equity of access is an imperative in the global information world of the 21st Century. For the information outsider however, or those who might be disenfranchised by social constructions, economic, legal, educational, or political circumstances, or geographical location, information poverty is a disheartening reality (Chatman, 1992; 1996; 2000; Burnett, Bessant, & Chatman, 2001). The functions of this panel are to explore the information worlds of select marginalized populations and the resulting implications for information behavior, social interaction, and pedagogy. It is intended to begin providing a framework for understanding the interactions between information, information access, information needs and uses, and legal and social contexts. The presentations and ensuing discussion will offer insight into physical and digital information access strategies and implications for Library and Information Science (LIS) education and practice.

This article explores library services and accessibility in public, school, and academic libraries from the perspective(s) of patrons who are differently-able. 1 For this study, five individuals, each of whom has unique experiences with disability and society, participated in in-depth interviews. Qualitative data analysis revealed the following themes: love for libraries and reading; disability as a socially-constructed phenomenon; physical limitations and barriers to library accessibility and services; technology and adaptation; and legislative compliance versus compassion. Through participants' voices, the study lends understanding to the “lived experiences” of library patrons who are differently-able and offers suggestions on how library accessibility may be improved.