This e-portfolio is designed to demonstrate the culmination of my time in the USF MLIS program. To do this, it will highlight the skills and knowledge I have obtained during my course of study. The artifacts I have provided are selected to support the 39 credit hours of coursework, including items from all six core courses of study, selected items from the additional six elective courses, and the digital competencies course. My areas of interest spanned cultural librarianship and special collections, as well as digital preservation.

There are four primary learning outcomes for this e-portfolio. They are as follows:

• Goal I: Leadership and Innovation

• Goal II: Systems and Services

• Goal III: Knowledge and Representation

• Goal IV: Theory and Praxis

​I have laid out this e-portfolio to highlight each of these learning outcomes, selecting courses and related artifacts from those courses. I believe this highlights the goal.

For me, this has been an interesting journey of growth and learning. I started working in an Information Commons, helping students with basic inquiries such as connecting to wi-fi and accessing the printers. I also handled updating computers and laptops, maintaining and logging tech item loans, and interlibrary loans. I also scheduled and ran International Games Day for our Information Commons. Sometime into this, the librarians I worked with both recommended I pursue the MLIS.

The core course of this program expanded the foundation that I had gained while working in the Commons. Foundations of Library and Info Science gave me the foundational knowledge to better understand the field and the larger responsibilities and challenges that come with Librarianship. Basic Info Sources and Services gave me the opportunity to learn how to develop and build my own LibGuides that provide users with high-quality information and resources. Intro to Library Admin was a course that challenged me to think critically about leadership and what it looks like in libraries. It made me ask myself how we lead across a workforce with a widening generational gap, now that many professionals don’t leave the work for what are considered traditional retirement ages. We seek out best practices for mentorship.

As I mentioned, I was interested in cultural studies. This stems from my undergraduate degree in History. Two courses in particular taught me a lot. The first was World Libraries. In this course, we learned about how libraries and librarianship look and function around the world. Providing us with a greater perspective on the field globally. In particular, I was able to conduct a deep dive into Hong Kong's libraries, how they came about, and how they function today. The second course was Multicultural Lit for Children. This course introduced us to children’s literature by and about cultures from all over the world. It also taught us how to evaluate those books and how to develop reading lists about those cultures to provide to library patrons.

Lastly, digital preservation has been an important topic to me. We live in an increasingly digital age, so understanding digital items, how they degrade over time, the challenges of obsolescence as technology continues to evolve, and the best practices we can implement were all things I gained in Digital Curation. For me, this was a particularly important course as it allowed me to research video games curation and preservation, a field I hope to work in one day. Learning about the challenges of accessibility and how poor planning, company closures, and server costs can cause some video games to disappear was enlightening and furthered my drive to seek ways to better protect these items for the future.

Though I may no longer work in that little information commons, the foundation it laid is still strong. Further built upon by the MLIS program and the skills and knowledge it has provided me. I look forward to the time when I can reenter the field and pursue this profession once again.