Thousands of people in Washington State are released from correctional custody every year to face the challenge of reentering the community. This research provides simple data that enables public libraries to better understand the challenges and needs of the formerly incarcerated people they serve, and design effective services and outreach to engage those who are not already library users. By collecting data directly from formerly incarcerated people, this study was able to form a rough profile of the community and discern patterns of need, information seeking behavior, and library perception and awareness.

The Orbis Cascade Alliance is a nonprofit consortium of 39 universities throughout the Pacific Northwest. They advance learning and research by combining the physical and digital library resources of their member universities to serve over 275,000 students. For my capstone, I constructed and conducted a series of tests designed to evaluate the Alliance’s catalog user interface and the information architecture through which they organize digital and physical materials. The results of these usability tests, card sorting activities, and interviews will help the Alliance to continue to promote academic success and better research.

In the summer of 2017, the University of Washington’s Odegaard Library created LORE to support EWP teachers. LORE is an online bank of teaching resources, and EWP is a collection of 100-level academic writing classes. Until this winter, an assessment had never been run to tell if LORE was effective. Our team interviewed 8 current instructors who had been introduced to LORE, and who had diverse levels of LORE adoption. We investigated their shared wisdom, or their “lore,” about the online tool. Our project produced recommendations for content and services as well as a replicable assessment process for the library.

We used participatory design (PD) as a way to fully incorporate the voice of children in the development of children’s library programming. Using KidsTeam-UW as a model, we worked for ten weeks with a group of eight 6-9 year-old children, focusing on a different aspect of 3D printing each week. Data in the form of session notes, photos, and video recordings were analyzed to determine important elements and best practices for a printing program, as well as guidelines for librarians to incorporate the practice of PD in their own program development.

Have you ever wondered whether your own experiences playing a game were mirrored by others? I have. Many months later and hours of research & cursing...here we are. This project explores the relationship between Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TRPG's) and Social Dynamics. This was done by conducting interviews and an online survey discussing gamer demographics, gameplay, and social dynamics. Analysis of this self-reported data will help to bridge the current information gap regarding the social dynamics of TRPG's. It will also be the first step in discussing the benefits of playing TRPG's on social behavior skill development.

To demonstrate what the Biola University library can offer to strengthen faculty research in STEM, this project performed an evaluation of the Biology collection examining age, usage, faculty opinion, and a peer collection comparison. The library has a current but very under used collection that is on-par with peers, but faculty want journals, not books. I recommend finishing the STEM analysis to see if trends hold across all the sciences. If that's the case, the library may have to think beyond journals and books. This project creates a research template to use for future evaluations.

With this project, I have conducted a literature review of academic library outreach and how it needs to adapt to entice Millennials and the popularity of nonacademic outreach. I also looked at how libraries have readily adopted tabletop game nights and use this to actively engage with their community of users. Overall, tabletop game night nights in academic libraries is an interdisciplinary topic that draws on scholarship from a variety of fields. I brought these threads together to make the case that academic libraries should consider tabletop game nights as a positive and successful outreach opportunity.

WasteLess is a mobile application that helps you reduce the amount of waste you are generating on a daily basis and embeds you in the Zero Waste movement. We curate resources from leaders in the community to help you ease into a Zero Waste lifestyle. You do not have to feel alone in your journey either; our application encourages members to share progress and even lets you set up friendly challenges to keep each other on track. WasteLess is a one-stop solution for anyone who wants to leave a smaller waste-footprint in a well-trodden world.

Comics are a unique medium and cataloging them consistently is challenging. Our project conducted original research to create cataloging recommendations for comics. We created two online surveys, one for librarians and one for users. We also conducted 25 librarian interviews. After cleaning and analyzing the data, we created a “how to” document. Users are frustrated by inconsistent cataloging and shelving practices. The number of responses our surveys received demonstrates the salience and timeliness of our research. Our project will make a difference by establishing basic standards in cataloging, making comics easier for librarians to catalog and for users to access.