According to many studies, older patrons that struggle with technology will often turn to their library for support. Our sponsor noticed this trend at Kitsap Regional Library’s Sylvan Way Branch. However, two issues were apparent: first, there were inherent privacy concerns in helping patrons with their online needs and second, many patrons needed extensive help beyond the time that could reasonably be devoted to helping one patron. Through observation and research, our team created a series of handouts on a variety of targeted topics. Our work bridges the gap between protecting information privacy, education, and staff time constraints.

PitchBook Data is an online data platform that provides research, financial information, and resources to analyze private companies, investments and funds, private equity and venture capital. PitchBook wants to explore new ways to surface insightful information to their users by allowing them to discover more information beyond what they were searching for, making it a one stop shop for all of their VC research needs.

I teamed up with the UW Libraries Teaching and Learning Group International Student/ELL Subcommittee to continue an investigation done by a capstone group in 2016. While the previous year’s project focused on reaching out to international students about their concerns, I reached out to the librarians and library staff at UW to see how conscious they are of the needs of the international student population and how they address those challenges. Through the course of the project I also gathered more information about what programs our international students are coming from in order to better inform staff and future training.

Successful data communication inspires action. In India, where nearly half of the world’s corneal blind population lives, policy makers must be persuaded to implement policy change to more efficiently treat these citizens. Sponsored by SightLife, SightLife Data is an information visualization tool that dynamically demonstrates the potential impact that policy change can have. SightLife will be able to use this site to create advocates and inspire policy change that will help the organization accomplish their mission of eradicating corneal blindness worldwide by the year 2040.

We are Símera. This team, made up of Sean Ker (Designer), Alexander Bell-Towne (Developer), Tyler Bauer (Developer), and Christopher Maglio (Project Manager), aims to revolutionize daily planning. Current planners require users to input a multitude of information, and also make the user decide the best way to go about completing these tasks. Our research found that many users are deterred by this painstakingly long process, and consequently developed a solution. Símera uses machine learning along with Artificial Intelligence to become the personal assistant for the everyday person. Simply tell us “I need to get milk” or “I need to go to the gym today” and Símera knows the who, what, when, and where in your schedule this event would be the most convenient.

One Equal Heart Foundation is working with the Tseltal indigenous community in Chiapas, Mexico, to develop the first known Tseltal language library and archive, with the goal of preserving Tseltal language and culture. This Tseltal House of Wisdom is part of a larger community development initiative called Sistema Integrada de Información y Evaluación Tseltal (SIET), which includes a community radio station and fotohistorias-style evaluation project. We conducted capacity-building workshops in Chiapas emphasizing inventory, cataloging metadata, and digitization. We also provided recommendations on archival storage materials, and wrote a paper describing the intersection of Indigenous Systems of Knowledge and LIS theory.

Thousands of travelers and homeowners use peer-to-peer homestay services like Airbnb every day. However, there is a major problem existing. The home management systems are not efficient, secure, and user-friendly. Most houses manage traveler’s entry-exit through conventional locks. When people book accommodations, they have to go through the hassle of collecting, using, and returning the key. Often, travelers reach the house during odd hours which becomes inconvenient for both parties. Also, traditional lock and key systems can lead to fraud. Our project solves this real-world problem by implementing a secure and user-friendly cloud-based IoT lock and key system.

For organizations and groups, combining social media and dialogue together can be even more of an important tool for communication, promotion, awareness, and action. While opportunities are there for dialogue via social media platforms, it can be hard to implement due to a lack of training or experience in dialogic methods, or a lack of awareness that these dialogic tools are available. This research project investigated the impact of using dialogue facilitation techniques on social media in an effort to have more meaningful dialogue and increased engagement via electronic platforms.

The UW has over 1500 hours of historically important audio in the Milo Ryan Phonoarchive. This collection includes archived CBS radio broadcasts, primarily from the World War 2 era. Currently, it is difficult for scholars to identify materials of interest within this collection. Metadata for this collection including titles, broadcast dates, and program titles were transcribed into a printed book. In this project, the book is being converted to a fully searchable digital finding aid using enhanced Optical Character Recognition (OCR) techniques to greatly enhance the original scans.