Research Symposium

BIO

Hi! I'm Savannah Lebedeker, a second-year political science student pursuing a minor in environmental science and policy at Florida State University. I am involved in the Women Student Union as Political Education Coordinator and Women's History Month Coordinator, FSU PIRG as Vice President, and I am currently employed by the Mathematics Department as a Peer Learning Assistant. After undergrad, I hope to attend law school to pursue a career in environmental law.

Library in a Box

Abstract

The "Library in a Box" initiative is a project specifically designed to tackle the digital divide, literacy gaps, and information inequities in underprivileged areas, notably in the Global South and rural regions of the Southern United States. By curating library resources and designing them to fit into a singular box to be sent to rural areas, the Library in a Box project gives communities the resources to develop their own easily accessible libraries. To form the prototype of the Library in a Box, our research team compiled literature reviews on the conventions and practices of ethical and sustainable mobile libraries, researched the best technology to be used in a mobile library setting, and crafted a survey to hone in on the specific interests and demographics of the areas where the project will be implemented. The preliminary results helped our team find the best ways to go about implementing the Library in a Box project based off of previous similar projects. The findings also helped us to find the technology to best suit our project. The survey results will be used to gain perspective on the communities that we pilot the Library in a Box project within the coming months. In the future, the project will be expanded to communities in Kenya and Uganda.

Keywords: Library, accessibility, literacy