Media contact: Bob Shepard
UAB Libraries receives funding from Adobe for digital enhancement.
(Photo by: Steve Wood)The University of Alabama at Birmingham Libraries received $75,000 from Adobe as part of the UAB’s designation as an Adobe Creative Campus.
The Adobe Creative Campus program spotlights leading colleges and universities that recognize the value of teaching digital literacy skills in higher education. The donation to the UAB Libraries will be used to add high-power technology to enhance digital literacy programming at the Mervyn H. Sterne Library LibLab, slated to open by fall 2021. This new capacity to support digital literacy-related initiatives will be integrated in the current media and technology offerings available at UAB Libraries.
“While professors are proficient in subject matter, librarians are experts in the paradigm shift from print to multiple modes of representation, making them the primary resource on campus for creating multimodal artifacts,” said Kasia Gonnerman, dean of the UAB Libraries. “Whether working to improve students’ digital literacy, information literacy or metaliteracy skills, librarians are leaders on campus for choosing, creating, using and evaluating multimodal tools, and this new funding helps enhance their work.”
With the new Adobe funding, the campus community will have access to new computers, tablets, digital drawing tools and other technologies suitable for high-capacity graphics processing and media creation in all disciplines, from humanities to medicine. Student workers and library staff who support the UAB Libraries Emerging Technology program will participate in additional training to support the Adobe products and new hardware so they are prepared to assist users with all the new technology.
UAB Libraries
(Photo by: Lexi Coon) comprises Mervyn H. Sterne Library, which supports teaching and research in the arts and humanities, business, education, engineering, natural sciences, and mathematics plus social and behavioral sciences, and Lister Hill Library of the Health Sciences, which provides services and resources for users in medicine, nursing, optometry, dentistry, public health, health professions and joint health sciences.
During the past seven years, UAB has increased library funding for scholarly resources by 20 percent and added nine library faculty positions. Aligned with the university’s institutional strategic plan, UAB Libraries has steadily acquired new software and enhanced facilities while remaining user-focused.
For more information, visit www.library.uab.edu.