Lauren Li

In Spring semester of 2018, I started working on the Folktale Storytelling Digital Library (FSDL), which aspires to be an online collection of storytelling videos produced by members of the Story Squad, a literacy project at UNC Chapel Hill’s School of Information and Library Science. Formerly, Story Squad’s storytelling performances were geographically limited around North Carolina’s Triangle area. By making versions of these storytelling performances available online via the FSDL, Story Squad can expand its reach to positively impact children both locally and across the nation.

Working off of a set of provided design documentation and wireframes for the FSDL, I collaborated with department and university IT staff to set up a MySQL database on UNC’s Carolina CloudApps web platform (based on RedHat’s OpenShift Enterprise software). With the database storing metadata for each storytelling video, I used PHP to connect the information to a front end made with the Material Design Bootstrap framework. Because the FSDL administrator also wanted to be able to add and edit content himself, I also developed a password-protected administrative interface to manage video records.