Thank you very much. Welcome y'all! To accommodate your access needs due to her foreign New York accent, Ellen thought it best that I give her part of the presentation. I would like to introduce my colleague Dr. Mary Cissell, Professor at the University of Southern Mississippi School of Library and Information Science. Thank you very much to Dona Weisman of NTRLS for inviting us to present about Universally Designed Collection Development @ Your Library. The handouts on the NTRLS website for this presentation include the PowerPoint presentation in PowerPoint format and, in keeping with the concepts of universal design, the text-only ASCII format of the presentation that may be converted easily to a multitude of other formats. There also is Microsoft Word and text only versions of my accompanying talk. The website http://www.a4access.org/cyc2008.htm contains links to these documents as well as to additional web resources, including many free ones. This presentation is available in additional alternative formats upon request. Please turn to Slide 2 to review an outline of this presentation in which you will be an active participant. You will notice that we will engage in universally designed collection development of our own. Please turn to Slide 3. First, we would like to engage in setting the stage through the KWL rubric. If you would take a few moments to record a few thoughts about: 1) What you know about Universal Design and Universal Design for Learning, 2) What You Want to Know, and 3) What you think you may learn in this session. If each of you could please briefly introduce yourself and relate how you responded to these questions. ================== Before we delve into the universally designed collection development process, let us briefly examine some of the issues involved in collection development, particularly for youth-oriented libraries. Please turn to Slides 4 and 5 that first graphically, then in text-based format, describe a sample library collection development process and related issues. Collection development. as we know, is a continual process of assessment and evaluation of our collections as they exist, if at all, scanning the environment for available resources, and acting upon our evaluations to create collections as we wish they would be. Please turn to Slide 6. What are some other issues? As we see, the diversity of our patrons is a major issue. We who work and are patrons of youth libraries are not alone in having diversity as a major issue. Please turn to Slides 7 through 9. These slides list a host of reasons why accessibility or equity of access is a universal and ever-present diversity-related issue. Isn't it amazing that children seem to grow up. Accessibility is a truly universal diversity issue for everyone throughout the lifespan. For example: How does each of you tie the ribbon you have received? Look around: does anyone tie the ribbon - or tie shoes - the same way? How would you tie the ribbon if one of your hands was accidentally caught in a car door or receiving a mosquito bite or you were bitten by a cat or snake? Such events happen every day - to everyone: everywhere: equal opportunity. Please turn to Slide 10. The diversity of having access needs also is protected by U.S. law. U.S. Education law has embraced accessibility and universal design and universal design for learning, for children and youth in the pre-K through 12 environment, notably in I D E A 2004, as aligned with No Child Left Behind or NCLB. These mandates are coming into higher education also through the U.S. Department of Education, as well as into the public sector through state and local legislation as we speak through implementation and enactment of institutional effectiveness and accountability standards. Please turn to Slides 11 and 12. These slides provide statistics showing and predicting the dramatic increase in the universal diversity of having access needs for our youth in the pre-K through 12 educational environment. Please turn to Slides 13 through 16. So how do we embrace our own immense diversity while simultaneously providing accessibility to our youth library collections? As depicted on Slide 14, one very practical solution also supported by evidence-based brain research, is universal design and its educational counterpart: universal design for learning. Slides 15 and 16 provide definitions of Universal Design or U D from the North Carolina State University Center for Universal Design, and its educational application, Universal Design for Learning, or UDL. The Center for Applied Special Technology, known as CAST, is the leader in UDL research and development. Note that U D and U D L are built into the initial design process – before product creation and presentation, i.e. doing it right the first time, thus eliminating the need for costly retrofitting, saving time, money, and effort, and thus promoting what are key words in everyone’s vocabulary: fiscal accountability and institutional effectiveness. Slide 16 describes UDL's three major principles of multimodality: multiple means of representation, multiple means of expression, and multiple means of engagement. Please turn to Slide 17. One UDL application, now the law for pre-K-12 U.S. public education under I D E A 2004 is nimas or the National Instructional Materials Accessibility Standard, a file format, which allows an original digitized source file to be readily published in multiple formats, including Braille and Digital Talking Book. By law, since July 2006, publishers must provide a NIMAS-based source file for all instructional materials utilized in the pre-K-12 U.S. public schools. The legal references for nimas and other cited legislation are provided in Appendix A of the presentation, Slides 39 to 44. Please turn to Slides 18 to 20. Along with U D and UDL, the other part of the Accessibility equation is Access or Assistive technology – abbreviated A T. Definitions are provided on Slides 19 and 20. Everyone uses A T every day: from umbrellas and cell phones, to stamps and staplers and Post-It-brand notes – as noted on the cited A T is Everywhere handout. referenced on Slide 20. Please turn to Slides 21 and 22. Slide 21 shows the diverse reasons why we use access technologies. Slide 22 has links to the website of the U.S. Department of Defense Computer/Electronic Accommodations Program or CAP. The referenced webpages have illustrated product information about the various types of access technologies available for our veterans, as well as for other U.S. federal employees. CAP’s A T categories are very useful because the A T is categorized by function – what the A T does, emphasizing that a particular type of A T is beneficial for supporting a wide range of needs and activities. Please turn to Slide 23. Now that we have a background in accessibility, universal design, universal design for learning, and access or assistive technology, we are ready to discuss some strategies and resources for universally designed collection development. The following slides will be helpful to do perform our session’s upcoming major activity: actually planning for universally-designed collection development. Please turn to Slide 24. Now let’s turn to UD/UDL strategies for youth collection development. First we want not only our physical space to be accessible, of course, meeting the referenced U.S. Department of Justice’s ADA Accessible design Standards, but also be universally designed. Our collection also needs to be universally designed in its provision of multimodal materials in an array of formats. Follow the links provided to explore two great websites about captioned and audio described resources. By the way, can you guess who are the most prolific users of captioning? Yes, patrons of sports bars! Please turn to Slide 25. Slide 25 lists key tips for universally designing for the online environment. A link to a set of tips by the international World Wide Web Consortium’s Web Accessibility Initiative, on whose guidelines many web accessibility standards are based, is provided. Please turn to Slide 26. Entering the world of library/instructional media, the captioned graphic contrasts the characteristics of instructional/library media that is fixed versus flexible universally-designed digital media that also happen to directly support today’s conference green initiative. When choosing digital media, choose accessible universally-dsigned digital media that is versatile, transferable to many other formats, and that allows for marking and annotation, and network capability. Let us pause briefly to visit a superb example of this accessible, UDL digital media: CAST’s UDL Editions: http://udleditions.cast.org/ Please turn to Slide 27. Slide 27 offers a chart of support technologies for UDL, listing diverse media by audio, visual, digital, physical, tactile, and other categories. A link is given in the "Other" category to a website on universally designed multisensory therapy called Snoezelen. Please turn to Slides 28 and 29 that list the numerous benefits of universally designed library/instructional materials. Please turn to Slides 30 and 31 for a selected list of library resources that promote universal design for learning. Please note that the number one recommendation is to ensure that we have in our libraries, and as part of our Diversity-related collections and reading lists, all of the books that have been awarded the prestigious Schneider Family Book Award, established 2004, the American Library Association set of three annual awards that is the Caldecott-Newbery for excellence in depiction of the accessibility experience. The Schneider award seal is embossed in Braille. Also of note on these slides are services that are free for eligible individuals such as the Texas Talking Book Program, RFB&D, and Bookshare, the last which has a special program for schools. Please turn to Slides 32, 33, and 34 for a list of websites of great interest. Resources numbers 1 and 2 on Slide 32 are the Texas Education Agency’s Texas Assistive Technology Network – an important website for all school librarians and parents of students in Texas schools - and the Texas A T project at U T Austin – an important website for all Texas residents. Slide 34 has links to a number of key confrences at which you can larn about and enjoy hands-on interaction with access technologies. Please turn to Slide 35. Now it is time for us to do our own planning for Universally Designed Collection Development. We have for you a host of multimodal library, as well as instructional materials for children and youth. Please work individually or in small groups to devise your plans, making use of the materials and completing the rubric shown on the PowerPoint Slide that has the following categories: Institution Mission and Collection Development Policy Your Patrons Patron Needs Present and Future Funding, Budget, Resource Sharing, Free Materials, Fixed/Digital Media Availability Assessment: What Library has now UDL Library Materials Selection; Program and Implementation Ideas at your library ============================ Discussion Time ========================== Please turn to Slide 36. Thank you. A great discussion. Now let us return to our KWL chart that we answered in part at the beginning of this session. There are two more questions to complete: What did you learn in this session? What will you do with what you learned? Please turn to Slide 37 for presenter contact information. Please turn to Slide 38: Oh my. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Kurzweil 3000, developed by my namesake, the famous Raymond Kurzweil, the inventor in 1976 at the young age of 28 of the original text to speech Kurzweil Machine and founder of Kurzweil Educational Systems ( http://www.kurzweiledu.com/ ). I am universally designed assistive technology that makes everyone’s life easier . I can voice and simultaneously visually read aloud text, guiding the reading by highlighting words, phrases, and sentences. I am very flexible. I can be personalized in many ways with different voices, pitch, volume, and rate, and various color combinations for highlighting text. Text font size and style and the pronunciation of words, can be adjusted. I navigate by keystroke or mouse and import/export documents. I have a dictionary and thesaurus. My multimodality for guided reading supports diverse learning styles, promoting everyone’s literacy skills. Everyone finds me helpful, especially when losing one’s voice or rehearsing presentations as not to speak past one’s allotted time. With that subtle reminder on this Friday afternoon .... Thank you very much. Have an accessible and universally designed weekend!