Virtual tours are excellent tools to invite users into your library and learn about spaces and services. However, traditional approaches to virtual tours such as welcome videos can be inaccessible, unengaging, and often require restarting from scratch as changes occur. As UNCW Library underwent a major renovation and expansion, the Teaching & Learning team sought to create a more robust, interactive, and inclusive virtual tour to highlight new spaces and services in the library at reopening, as well as helping users (re)discover ways of engaging with existing areas. This session will showcase a partnership with the university’s Distance Education and eLearning team to create an innovative virtual tour of the library using the ThingLink platform.
The virtual tour incorporates multimedia elements such as 360-degree panoramic images and interactive hotspots, allowing users to immerse themselves within the virtual environment. The designers employed Universal Design for Learning and Trauma-Informed Pedagogy in creating this tour, which includes accessibility features such as screen reader compatibility and emphasizes details such as accessible entrances, noise level expectations, and visual previews of library classrooms. The digital object’s flexibility allows librarians to embed it in its entirety or highlight a particular space in tutorials, our learning management system, or even through a virtual reality mode. This flexibility also extends to the design process, allowing designers to make updates quickly and seamlessly. The tour is now a required component of the First-Year Seminar, ensuring early exposure to library resources to promote students’ academic success and assuage library anxiety.
Attendees at this session will have the opportunity to interact with the virtual tour and learn how they can leverage a lower-cost technology to adapt at their own institutions. Attendees will also learn about UNCW Library’s partners on this project and identify potential collaborators in their communities. This session aims to inspire attendees to rethink how they market their library as a community hub and revamp the ubiquitously generic library tour into an immersive, inclusive, sustainable, and engaging experience.
About the Presenters Brittany O’Neill is the Information Literacy Librarian at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she coordinates the library’s support of informational literacy in the University Studies curriculum. She serves as the liaison to English Composition, the Honors College, and the Center for Academic Advising, and is the co-facilitator of UNCW’s Critical Information Literacy Immersion Program.
Delandrus Seales is the Teaching and Learning Librarian at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. She is a functional specialist on the Teaching & Learning Team with the Academic Research and Engagement department where she develops online learning objects, facilitates inclusive and accessible pedagogy, supports the utilization of instructional technology, and collaborates with library/campus partners to support digital information literacy initiatives.
