As part of her spring 2019 special topics course “Disability Informatics and Information,” UNC School of Information and Library Science (SILS) Assistant Professor Amelia Gibson has scheduled a series of guest lectures that are open to the public. Several of the presenters will deliver their talks remotely via Zoom, and lectures can be viewed in person in Manning Hall 014 or accessed online using Zoom. Talks will focus on topics such as frameworks for understanding disability, disability and the law, and designing enabling technology.

A schedule of lectures and speaker bios are available on the Community Engaged Disability Informatics (CEDI) website at https://cedi.web.unc.edu/2019-cedi-lecture-series. Talks without Zoom registration links will be presented live only to members of the class, but recordings will be posted later to the CEDI website.

The public portion of the lecture series is supported by an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) grant that Gibson received in 2017 for her project “Deconstructing Information Poverty: Identifying, Supporting, and Leveraging Local Expertise in Marginalized Communities.”

“As I’ve been conducting research for the project, I’ve been hearing from many librarians who have been tasked with creating programs for people with disabilities, but who have had no training or guidance on how to develop that programming,” Gibson said. “I hope these lectures might give librarians in that situation a place to start, while this course provides future librarians with an even deeper understanding of how to collaborate with the disabled community to develop the most effective programming possible.”

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