Digital Privacy and Protection as it affects Youth Patrons in County Public Library Systems in NC

Libraries frequently have free WIFI, public computers, printing, and now are relying on digital libraries to increase collection size and accessibility. They make available digital resources to decrease the digital divide. Adding resources to the management systems that coordinate information across multiple branches in a library, as well as housing identifying information required for library cards, and suddenly it becomes apparent how important digital security and privacy is on behalf of library systems. Since policies happen at the system level, it’s difficult for individual librarians to advocate for the recommended settings to be implemented if the administration is not fully supportive of the immediacy of such actions. Utilizing ALA guidelines, CIPA, COPPA, and NC Laws, this thesis project serves as a content analysis of 25 NC County Library systems. Through the content analysis, I make apparent basic actionable procedures libraries could implement to increase transparency alongside enhancing protection procedures.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Dawn Jewell: The New Voice of Appalachia

In his debut novel Trampoline, Robert Gipe unearths many of his readers’ preconceived notions about female activism in present-day Appalachia and challenges them directly through the otherness of the protagonist, Dawn Jewell. A fifteen-year-old punk in Appalachian Kentucky family full of troublemakers, Dawn is an outcast among her social circles. She wears heavy, Gothic makeup, gets suspended from school regularly, and subsequently finds herself among a rambunctious group of lawless ruffians. However, Dawn has a side to her that invites reader empathy; with no shortage of teenage angst, she begins to protest against coal mining on the mountain situated just above her home. On this personal journey to save her homeland from destruction, Dawn becomes the new voice of Appalachia in that she gains much agency as the novel progresses; her involvement is wholly autonomous, making it all the more genuine and accessible to those who identify with her. Utilizing scholarship by Joyce Barry, Shannon Bell, Yvonne Braun, and Roger Cunningham, I analyze how Gipe uses a social outcast as the vital proprietor of activism in her community, interrogating how Gipe’s character development influences the novel’s reception in Appalachia and beyond