Digital Literacy

by Katherine Chen ’23

As a second year returning fellow, I had a lot of ideas and knowledge coming into this school year. I had the foundation of knowledge from last school year, and because of that, I had flowing ideas of what kind of projects and services the fellows could work on. 

Meeting this year’s fellowship cohort made me even more excited. In the Research Team specifically, we all came from different backgrounds with different knowledge and perspectives that only served to help us refine our project as it went. At the end of fall semester, the team had to present our pitch idea to a group of stakeholders where we would receive feedback. Working together with the team on our pitch idea was one of the most gratifying experiences of the fellowship for me. I came in with ideas of my own, and when they were introduced to my team members, the ideas were refined and iterated to be even better. One of my ideas was to work with New Student Services on GBO curriculum so that all incoming students would have working knowledge about the library. When I introduced this idea to the team, we worked together to refine it to be even better. We workshopped the idea so that it became working together with resource centers at Cal— such as the Career Center, the Student Learning Center, and Bridges— to discern what students knew about the resources the library offered and to provide a fact sheet about library resources so that students could easily find answers to their questions. We all had different backgrounds and knowledge that we brought to the table, and the team’s intersectionality only helped with refining our project. 

My biggest takeaway from the fellowship this year is that working in teams and being supported by your team members makes all the difference. I learned so much from my peers whether it be about library or campus services I was unaware of, to new perspectives on issues that I would have never encountered on my own. All the people I have met and learned from through the fellowship have made my experience memorable and worthwhile, and I am so grateful I had the privilege of their presence in my life.

by Maura Adela Cruz

Coming from a low-income Indigenous Oaxacan community, the library was among the few educational resources available in my hometown. Growing up, it was not only a space for reading and studying, but for research, creativity, and design. From academic tutoring, to crochet circles, and English language classes, our public library held many services for the community. However, despite the multitude of resources available, they were inaccessible to the people of my town. A lack of awareness, lack of time, and language barriers are only some of the reasons that the library resources were inaccessible in the context of my community. Due to the lack of accessibility, my Indigenous Oaxacan community came together to form our own spaces, programs, and organizations. We sought to make resources available and accessible in a way that centered our interests and needs. Because of my aforementioned experiences, I became quickly familiarized with the design thinking process and noticed many similar patterns occurring in Berkeley.

Attending Berkeley as a low-income and first-generation Indigenous student, I noticed the situation mirrors that of my hometown. Although the university offers a plethora of resources for students to enjoy, these resources are often not accessible to students of marginalized backgrounds. Prior to the Undergraduate Library Fellowship, I personally had very little awareness of the extent of resources and services available in library spaces.

I joined the Making team to help encourage students to use the Makerspace and figure out ways to increase accessibility to this wonderful resource. Throughout the semester, we worked as a team to brainstorm, listen to UC Berkeley students, identify our target audience and a problem statement. Understanding multiple student perspectives, and coming together as a group was important to the process of creating and initiating potential solutions to the issues at hand.

One part of the process that stood out to me were the student interviews we conducted to gain user insights on Moffitt Library and the Makerspace. It was helpful to validate my experiences and also go beyond my experiences. Through the interviews and observations I was able to consider other barriers marginalized students face with being able to use the library resources, specifically in the Makerspace. This activity helped me apply the lesson to observe, empathize, and question, as was discussed in our Makerspace team meetings. The user interviews were crucial to understanding the situations and sentiments of several UC Berkeley students, and identifying a problem statement to work on solving. It allowed us to learn more about the target audience and who would benefit from our efforts to make the Makerspace more accessible.

After identifying the target audience and problem statement, we met as a team to come up with solutions and actions that can be taken on our behalf to reach our goal for increased accessibility. Throughout these past few months, the process has been centered on coming together and taking into account the users needs. How can our resources and space best benefit every user, especially students who have been historically excluded and marginalized? We asked ourselves many questions, came together as a team to share our experiences, sought varying perspectives from other UC Berkeley students, and received feedback from our mentors and the Research team. To put it simply, my experience in the fellowship has solidified that solutions and next steps towards accessibility take a collective effort.