The Caltech Archives hold a heterogeneous audio collection consisting of over 1300 cassettes, digital audio tapes (DATs), and CDs with content from 1932-2004 that has been slowly degrading while trapped in the archive. This project’s aim was to answer how this collection could be preserved and made more accessible to the community. It involved checking the physical items, streamlining the metadata in OpenRefine and reimporting it into ArchiveSpace as a resource record. This will allow the archive staff to move forward with preserving the audio through digitization and transcriptions that can be linked to the resource record for further accessibility.

In our capstone we wanted to engage patrons as participants in the learning process of an exhibit, rather than just as viewers. The New Soviet Child is an interactive user-collaborative exhibit that is meant to elicit patron responses as a learning mechanism. We believe that by having patrons engage with the material and offer their own interpretations, an exhibit can become a powerful tool for practicing critical thinking skills. The Pamela K. Harer Russian Children’s Book Collection was chosen for its vivid imagery that conveys the cultural and political changes of the late Russian Empire and early Soviet Union.

The correspondence of Cardinal Richelieu was last compiled in the 19th century. That collection is acknowledged as incomplete and biased; underrepresented are letters from aristocratic women whose influence over events might not be fully understood. To remedy this, I have visited archives in Europe and the US to identify and photograph letters to and from Richelieu that were not included in the Avenel compilation. I have begun to transcribe, TEI-encode, and publish these letters in a digital archive, and will upload the teiHeader metadata to correspSearch, making this valuable historical information more accessible and compatible with modern research methods.

The Seattle Chamber Music Society’s (SCMS) new move has made way for the new Toby Saks Sheet Music Library, a 1,272-piece collection of solo and chamber music that was once Toby Saks’, a renowned cellist and founder of the SCMS. To organize and preserve the music and annotations, I constructed a five-tier classification system, wrote collection management recommendations, created a preservation and conservation resource guide, improved the searchability of the catalog, and labeled the scores, housed in archival folders. The collection is now browsable, usable and accessible to SCMS staff, visiting musicians, and community supporters for years to come.

This project addressed Scarecrow Video’s need for close assessment of part of its collection of 14,000+ out-of-print VHS cassettes. Records for the 500 oldest titles were transferred to an Excel workbook, and the data enhanced with copyright information, current fair market values, and notes on archival value. This information was then used to create: 180+ new “Rental by Agreement” (RBA) recommendations; a list of titles earmarked for future digitization; written suggestions for future VHS collection management; and several technical documents. This project provided Scarecrow staff with both enhanced collection management data, and tangible tools for future audits and volunteer training.

It has long been debated if Walter Pierce, namesake of Eastern Oregon University Pierce Library, was affiliated with the KKK. The committee tasked with reviewing this issue requested access to archival materials about library history and Walter Pierce, but these materials were neither inventoried nor organized, leaving them inaccessible. To address this, I inventoried the items and organized them into two collections, then I produced finding aids and itemized spreadsheets for each collection. I also searched for library-related newspaper articles to supplement the collections. The Walter M. Pierce and Pierce Library General History collections are now accessible to library users.

While curating a library exhibit for Special Collections, I noticed the challenge of locating historical resources on the impact women had in the Pacific Northwest outdoors, in one accessible place. I bounced between local, state-wide, and national resources, adding much time to my research process. As a solution, I created and published a LibGuide for Special Collections, highlighting their resources on local women in the outdoors. They now have a public LibGuide showing primary & secondary sources with tips on researching historical women. This guide is a reminder to consider local women in research, contributing to outdoor preservation and advocacy.

Wrangling the Seattle Times Journalist Files is a project organizing and cataloging the journalist files that were acquired from the Seattle Times by the University of Washington Libraries about 9 years ago. These files contain numerous documents that the journalists collected while researching and writing pieces for the paper. The task of the project was to create a set of guidelines for cataloging these resources so that student workers at the library can continue the work of organizing these documents. A LibGuide was also created for these documents to make them more accessible to the users of the library.

Following the Japanese attack on Unalaska in 1942, government officials forced Unangan civilians to evacuate their villages in the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands and transported them to inadequate living quarters in locations across Southeast Alaska. They lived in these camps for two to three years without adequate food, shelter, or medical care. Relatively few resources exist concerning these tragic events. This subject bibliography includes citations to primary and secondary resources on the topic. It was created to support future research and aid the Juneau-Douglas City Museum in curating an exhibit to be on display in the summer of 2020.

The Miller Horticultural Library houses approximately 500 maps and plans associated with Pacific Northwest gardens. However, for 2/3 of the collection, there was no inventory or means of locating items. To address this, we inventoried the map collection, recording the items’ descriptions, creation information, and locations. We aligned this spreadsheet with the schema for the Library’s archive management system so it could be imported. This will allow the map collection to be searched by element, and for librarians to locate items and generate finding aids. We also created a collection development plan to guide future management of the collection.