2 nd Reflection
Many events and activities we have involved in the second week, such that:
We visited the Siebel Centre for Design (SCD). A session by Saad Shihab has been given to us discussing:
- The Design Thinking concept: a way to solve problems. Examples and exercises have been given to us.

- Tools and mindsets have been given to us through a PowerPoint presentation.
We also visited CITL to continue the exploration of VR and 3-D printers.
The most Impressive visit was the Instructor Studio in CITL, a well-equipped studio for photographers.
We had a session given by Clara in Mortenson Centre about SWAT vs. SOAR such that:
- SWOT: stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity, & Threats.
- SOAR: stands for Strength, Opportunities, Aspirations, & Results.
We had a tour of the School of Information Sciences (iSchool) by Linda Smith. The iSchool educates leaders in the information sciences.

Emily Knox presented an informative session about the programs offered for Master’s & Ph.D. students.
The Main Library building is a huge building. The tour was done by Sara Christensen, showing all sections of the library such as the archives, manuscripts, and Lincoln Collection books, besides the help desk section. Furthermore, Kyle Rimkus showed us the Digital Preservation and made a tour as:
- Visited the Preservation Services section, Tracy Popp presented details of the digitization process.
- Visited the Digitization Lab, Angela Waarala & Racheal Johns explained clearly how the transformation of negative collections into a digital format.
- A tour by William Schlaack has been done, we visited the Internet Archive section, this section is responsible for internet digitization; video and audio tapes preservations are transformed into internet format through special tools & equipment.
we meet the Dean of Libraries and University Librarian Mr. John Wilkin.
The Urbana Free Library:
- The library is called ‘Free’ because before, people must pay money to use the library collections and services. Therefore, this library is one of the first libraries that became a free public library.
- We visited Teen Open Lab: A social environment that was prepared for teenagers, providing facilities and technical tools that enable them to play games and practice their favorite hobbies.
- We had a session by Cris Prom about Library digital strategies. The most impressive subjects were repository services, emergency digitization, AI and learning machines, and immersive services.
- We visited the Graining Engineering and make a tour around different learning spaces by Eric Vetter. Showing different styles of classrooms.
- A session was given in Mortenson Centre by Clara about AI libraries and machine learning.
- We watched a movie (CODDED BIAS) about the implementation of AI as facial recognition technology in many countries such as the USA: NY, Washington D.C, The UK, South Africa, China, and the Soviet.