Keirston Rebekah Swope

I am currently a student at Kent State University and enrolled in their ALA accredited Masters of Library and Information Science program. My focus is in Museum Studies and I have an interest in preservation. I love learning, knowledge, and information. I believe that education and reading can be very powerful tools in transforming and empowering people, so I try and become a bridge between people and these tools.

This really hit home with me when I worked for 3 years as a student worker in the Disability Support Services at our local community college and it was a very enlightening experience for me. While I did various projects in the office, they all consisted of making information available to those with disabilities who would otherwise have had a difficult time completing their coursework or would not have been able to go to college at all. Whether it was reading aloud and recording text books, notes, and assignments on audio tape, disk, or later, MP3s; scanning information and editing to correct mistakes to ensure students had complete information, or the copious amounts of textbook/note enlarging; these were only some of the ways I helped provide specified informational assistance to those in need. I was also responsible for organizing the physical and digital materials we currently had, those created throughout the semesters for future student use, as well as updating material for easier, more technologically friendly formats (when I started, the office was using a single recording cassette deck an expensive reader software. By the time I transferred, we were making MP3's, .doc, and .pdf's available to the students for their iPods, laptops, and other devices.)

The time I worked there brought together my love of sharing the tools of information and knowledge with those that would have had a harder, more difficult time achieving their goals. That I could help make someone's educational/learning goals a little easier was a big influence on what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. Making sure that our past materials are preserved for the future and helping to create ways for those who wish to see them, whether in person, through replications, or digitally, and still have a quality experience with them are important factors in my education and ethics.

The background image was taken on campus at KSU.