Does school participatory budgeting (SPB) increase students’ political efficacy? SPB, which is implemented in thousands of schools around the world, is a democratic process of deliberation and decision-making in which students determine how to spend a portion of the school’s budget. We examined the impact of SPB on political efficacy in one middle school in Arizona. Our participants’ (n = 28) responses on survey items designed to measure self-perceived growth in political efficacy indicated a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 1.46), suggesting that SPB is an effective approach to civic pedagogy, with promising prospects for developing students’ political efficacy.

This presentation addresses the usability testing and user feedback which initiated the decision to purchase a web-scale discovery service for a large academic research library, the selection process to determine a service provider, the project management employed to implement and market the service, feedback provided by users and library staff, and the future impact of web-scale discovery services on libraries and library staff.