Personal Connection

I had to put quite a bit of thought into how this inquiry project might have changed how I approached inquiry previously. I think that I have always been one to ask questions, and want to know more. I've always looked up information on topics of interest--gleened from the daily news, from the newspaper, from word of mouth, etc.--before this class. I am in the school of library sciences, after all. Librarians love to look things up, and if they don't, they should.

However, this project forced me to look at how I presented research materials--those tidbits I looked up so readily--to a group. I had to consider who might be reading or perusing any materials I prepared, and I found that, by considering the audience, I made key decisions that altered the appearance and format of the final project.

For one thing, I had to consider how easy any multimedia resources, such as movie clips, audio clips, or even digital libraries, could be accessed. I eliminated a couple of links from the final resource because I couldn't always get the links to work. (For whatever reason.) For example, I wanted to link directly to a photo album in the Bienkecke Digital Library, and for the life of me, I couldn't seem to get it to work more than half of the time. (For whatever reason. Gah. I still say it should have worked.)

I think in the future, I will consider my audience from the start of the project. This made a difference to the end result, and I think my project was better for it.