Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

A Comparison Of Public Versus Private Academic Library Web Sites In Alabama For Accessibility And Web 2.0 Applications, Amy E. Smith

SLIS Connecting

The purpose of this study is to analyze and compare Alabama’s academic library Web sites to determine how accessible they are for persons with disabilities and what kind of useful links such as tutorials and Web 2.0 applications can be found on the home pages. The importance of this study is to determine the accessibility and readability of academic library Web site home pages based off of the current WCAG 2.0 guidelines, as well as the availability of Web 2.0 tools and tutorials on library home pages. By studying the results of the Web site accessibility software, college and university …

Beyond Assumptions: How Urban Students View And Practice Digital Literacies In And Out Of School, Storey Mecoli

Current Issues in Emerging eLearning

This qualitative, ethnographic case study investigates digital literacy practices and perceptions of students at an urban public high school in the Boston metropolitan area comprising a racially, ethnically, linguistically, and economically diverse student body, an under-studied demographic. The study compares in-school and out-of-school literacy practices and posits the role schools might play in preparing learners. The study examines digital literacy practices among student based on information gathered through focus groups, survey methods, and interviews. Three controlling questions guided the study:

1. What digital literacy practices are students in Washington High School engaging in outside of school?
2. What purposes do these youth …

Build It And Will They Come?: Participatory Digital Archives, Hesitant Users, And The Emerging Archival Commons, Dallas C. Hanbury

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

In the mid-2000s, archivists introduced a range of Web 2.0-based participatory features into digital archives to make them more accessible to patrons. Some archivists hoped the increased accessibility of digital archives would lead to the creation of virtual communities of users that would eventually participate in archival workflows, especially description. Archivists’ desire culminated in the idea of the archival commons, a network-crowd sourcing model highly dependent on intensive user participation. Users however, only minimally used digital archives’ participatory features during the mid-‘00s. Recent scholarship though, reveals that users have begun to increasingly use the participatory aspects of digital archives, suggesting …