Map showing "Trammel's Trace," the first road from the north (present-day Arkansas) into Texas, used around 1800. It includes notations for abandoned settlements, modern cities, and Caddo villages documented from 1800 to 1840, as well as other historic roads used at the time of Trammel's Trace.

This two-year project, led by the University of North Texas Libraries, will broaden access to 141 books selected by one of three publishers or by the UNT Libraries for their relevance to the history of Texas and Oklahoma. It will also broaden access to five humanities-related books to be selected once the grant starts. Those books not yet available online through the Gateway to Oklahoma History, Portal to Texas History, or UNT Digital Library websites will be digitized, with full-text searching, and added to the appropriate site. All books will be converted to EPUB and Kindle formats, made available to download with the digitized version online, and added to the UNT Library Catalog and to WorldCat. The project also includes the production of “print-ready” PDFs from the scans of many of the books to allow them to be made available for sale in print again using print-on-demand technology. This proposal was submitted in June 2015 and funded in December 2015 by the National Endowment for the Humanities for $95,599.

Classrooms, libraries, student unions, and university campuses shape students’ learning experiences. These physical learning spaces set the stage for college student engagement and academic performance. Most of the research about the role of physical spaces in learning lacks the student perspective. The goal of this study was to offer a student-centered vision of ideal learning spaces. Students are the learners for whom learning spaces are designed, and this thesis examines the way students of one summer class at Oklahoma Baptist University conceptualized and interacted with their learning spaces. Data collection included surveys of the students, a focus group with members of the class, participant observation in the classroom, and interviews with students and the professor. Students viewed physical spaces as the backdrop for human action and chose spaces that supported their learning styles and goals. Students described supportive spaces as warm, purposefully crafted spaces, and full of other people who were seriously pursuing the same goals. This thesis explores the ways students conceptualized and interacted with learning spaces as a network of support for their learning and provides recommendations for the design of learning spaces that facilitate this support.