During this project I worked with the Ozarks Literacy Council to establish the statistics on their user groups. Due to the OLC being a non-profit, their funding is based on the support of organization such as United Way. However, with a recent change in administration, there is a lack of evidence as to which demographics are utilizing the services offered by the OLC and where gaps lie in services offered. I compiled statistics gathered by the OLC and used Excel to created a spreadsheet utilizing macros that will make keeping stats in the future more user friendly so they are able to maintain this information on their own in the years to come. Additionally, I created an infographic highlighting user satisfaction and accomplishments by the learners that will be used to increase grants and fundraising.

The Puyallup Public Library serves the citizens of the city of Puyallup in Washington state. They enjoy a youth services department comprised of two children’s librarians and a teen librarian. My project focused on analyzing the current services of the children’s librarians, researching things they could do to improve their services, and offer recommendations based off that research. My analysis indicated potential improvements in marketing and programming evaluation strategies, my research indicated specific marketing strategies and evaluation rubrics that would be applicable, and my recommendations were tailored specifically to the Puyallup Public Library. My research project offers two things primarily to the children’s librarians. Not does it offer recommendations with objectivity realistic marketing strategies, but those recommendations take the personality and unique customer base of the Puyallup library into account. Put another way, my recommendations seek to supplement the children’s services, not replace them.

Following the path of Moore’s Law, teleoperated robots are becoming more accessible and ubiquitous in the everyday consumers life -- forever changing the way we work and interact with the world around us. In order to maintain public safety in a society cohabited by humans and machines, the Robot Operator License ensures that users have completed training and received a license to operate their robot. This educational course provides critical information and interactive simulations in an effort to smoothly transition this technology into the modern world. Developed in partnership with the University of Washington Human-Centered Robotics Lab, the Robot Operator License is designed for the Beam+ telepresence robot, which serves as a proof-of­-concept and demonstrates a need for this type of operational education. Our course aims to tackle the policy challenges and threats to public safety due to the use of teleoperated robots by the everyday individual.

The Tseltal Maya are an Indigenous people living in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico who are inheritors of a rich Mayan culture but experience extreme poverty. One of the many challenges they face is the loss of language and culture in the face of encroaching globalization and assimilation into the Mestizo culture. The Tseltal House of Wisdom will hold what will be the world's largest collection of Tseltal language materials. However, the current conditions in which the materials are stored, as well as a jungle environment, present the difficult task of organization and preservation. Through a partnership with the One Equal Heart Foundation, we traveled to Chiapas to assess their newly constructed building and collection to offer recommendations for Collection Development, Classification, Environmental Controls, and Technology. We hope the Tseltal House of Wisdom grows into a vital resource for the community as they continue to strengthen their language and culture.

Imagine working with a community that has no word in their language for library. The Tseltal Mayan people in Chiapas, Mexico have recognized the benefits and necessity of a community knowledge house. Currently, potential materials are stored across 600-square-miles and need to be collected in a central location and organized. More than an archive, this location is meant to be a community center where Tseltal cultural materials can be accessed and shared. In conjunction with the One Equal Heart Foundation, our team designed recommendations for increasing access and collection development in order to support the community’s cultural and linguistic preservation. The delivered manual of recommendations includes examples of indigenous and Latin American libraries to inspire community leaders as they envision the future of their knowledge house.

The Baylor University Libraries need to provide relevant, meaningful library instruction sessions for 90 course sections of ENGL 1304: Thinking, Writing, & Research, a first year English course required by most of Baylor’s undergraduate programs, without overloading any single librarian and creating continuity between instructing librarians. In this project, I explore the content/practices currently used in ENGL 1304 library instruction sessions and the needs/expectations of their graduate level student instructors, who teach 60% of the sections. The gathered information is used to create a set of new standardized learning outcomes that form the foundation of an instruction request form.

With so many contradicting media articles citing research, knowing what to believe can be frustrating for everyday media consumers. Without diving into academic text themselves, it can be quite the challenge for consumers to know if the appropriate level of authority to attribute to the research cited (is the journal being cited well-respected? Are the findings controversial? Do similar studies exist with different results?). The particular factors which influence the amount of coverage academic research receives from journalists are not well understood, which further complicates the situation. We have gathered and analyzed descriptive data about media articles and the academic works they cite to help us understand what sort of research receives attention from journalists. Through this research we hope to give consumers a better understanding of the relationship between journalism and academic research, and thereby enable them to create more informed interpretations of information they encounter in media.

In July of 2011, Washington adopted the Common Core State Standards. Schools across the state have since been working to implement these new standards and establish a platform for learning and growth. Due to implementation still being in its earlier stages, there is a strong need for programs that will develop needed information literacy skills to satisfy these standards. The “4 Winners” are a part of an information literacy program that I designed to build critical research and evaluation skills in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. In this digital age, students must conduct their own research in an effective and critical manner. Working with Montlake Elementary School, the “4 Winners” Information Literacy Program has been designed to be used by instructors/librarians and can be adapted to a variety of learning environments. This program develops invaluable researching skills that students will need in order to be successful throughout their lives.

My Capstone project is focused on the development of the instruction and illustration of two education programs for the Learning Theater; an extension of the Gottesman Library at the Teachers College of Columbia University. The Learning Theater is at the forefront of innovative technology, education, and immersive learning. I provided two multi-media rich programs for implementation at the theater, titled Genre Journey and History Walks. Genre Journey, a program geared toward middle school aged students distinguishes the differences between six literary genres while students explore creative and narrative writing, character context adaptation, and empathy. History Walks juxtaposes the textbook account of The Civil Rights history with the personal narratives of the same history; paralleled to emphasize and feature silenced and underrepresented voices from this historical era. These programs were created with evocative learning objectives in collaboration with the newest technologies in order to promote content for long-term understanding and life-long learning.