iSchool Capstone

Award Winner

2014

Forecasting the Future of Library Leadership at the UW Libraries

The University of Washington (UW) Libraries, like many organizations, are facing a large number of retirements in the next 5-10 years. This could result in a massive loss of experience and institutional knowledge, which would be detrimental to UW as a whole. This is because the UW Libraries holds a central position in the success of the University as an academic research university. As the intellectual commons of the University, both physically and virtually, the Libraries address the information needs of the whole University community. By combining a literature review, interviews with staff, and case studies, I investigated current and future trends in academic libraries and higher education, identified necessary leadership competencies, and recommended best practices to help create an effective succession plan that will ensure a smooth transition to new leadership.

Friends of the San Francisco Public Library: Communications Project

Communications, including the sharing of and access to information, is crucial to any organization, especially non-profits that rely on a rotating mix of volunteers, have building space in multiple locations, and the inevitable shortage of paid staff. The Friends of the San Francisco Public Library, a member and donor-centric organization that fundraises and advocates for the library, have struggled greatly with these restraints. A plan to strengthen internal communications by creating digital platforms to access and share information was created. Virtual spaces were designed for all parties involved, enabling staff, volunteers and board members to become proactive and more self-sufficient. Two databases were built: one that eliminated a tedious daily data entry task, and another 26 that keeps track of all of the categories and subjects of donated books, which has tightened the organization’s successful book operations department.

Git Music: Music Collaboration

A large aspect of creating music is collaborating with others. Most musical collaborations occur within physical proximity to each other because few tools allow for collaboration from afar. Git Music allows for musical collaboration to take place online. Specifically, we created an easy to use website that people use to discover and download others’ musical projects. Our service provides people with the ability to browse, upload, and download musical projects. Each song also contains an informational visual that displays its download and upload history linked to each artist. We gauged our success by surveying users to find the ease of use and overall satisfaction with the website. By developing a platform for people to download and upload their musical projects, we provide an avenue for artists to easily collaborate their music together.

Hierarchy Management Platform Interactive Training

“Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don’t think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without talking about the other.” – Bill Gates As Information Technology is growing at a rapid pace, more companies realize technology has become more of a game changer that can improve business processes, and new business models can create significant new opportunities. Introduction of new technology into the workplace requires staff training. My project is to work with Cisco staff to create Interactive Training Materials that are hyper-intuitive and user-friendly for Hierarchy Management Platform (HMP), a tool which allows users to view and perform various actions on hierarchical data in several different formats. The overall vision of HMP is to establish an enterprise level self-service platform to provide holistic insight into hierarchical structures through Single Source of Truth for hierarchies.

Holistic Collection Development for Philosophy

Our project was assisting the new Philosophy liaison by revising the Philosophy collection development policy. To aid our revision, we performed a collection assessment and a user needs survey. We discovered unused parts of the collection, especially among the foreign language materials. We also identified services our patron group strongly desired, such as the PhilPapers database. Based on this data, we rewrote the policy. Our policy will allow the Libraries to better manage this portion of their collection and thus serve their users efficiently and effectively. Our project may possibly serve as a template for future collection development projects at the UW Libraries.

Improve Your Odds: PEACOCKS and the Evolution of Skillset Matching

Skillset matching is essential when organizational demands evolve, and new project opportunities arise. Alignment of people to meet changing needs is often based on instinct and tribal knowledge rather than optimized and informed by relevant data. Investing in people as valuable business assets requires knowledge of current skills, and awareness of future opportunities to align interests with growth. University of Washington Information Technology (UW-IT), like many large organizations, has limited visibility into the vast skillsets, experience and interests of its numerous staff. PEACOCKS provides a framework and tool prototype that systemizes human characteristics such as skills, experience levels, and growth interests, then applies a taxonomic schema to match project requirements with optimal team members. PEACOCKS is a vessel for collecting and organizing valuable knowledge and insight into staffs’ talent, experience, and growth potential. Built for UW-IT, this prototype is a customizable foundation that could be leveraged by other organizations.

Improving Metrics for Library Comparisons

With approximately 9,000 public library systems across the United States, the Seattle Public Library (SPL) faces the challenge of identifying a network of similar library systems for collaboration. The current comparison and analytics are somewhat basic and only take into consideration traditional library measures. These measures do not capture the complexity of the diverse communities in which the libraries are rooted. The goal of this project is to build on these measures and incorporate demographic data to enable a holistic comparison. Additionally, rigorous statistical analysis methods will be applied to the data in order to improve the accuracy of results. By identifying and collaborating with similar libraries, SPL will be more effective at serving its community.

InfoHub: Revamping the Information Seeking Processes and Behaviors of the Production Resource Training Organization (Code 900T)

Intercollegiate Athletics Leadership (IAL) Database

The IAL Database is a storage and retrieval system for identifying the leadership (head coaches, university presidents, etc.) and institutional movement patterns of Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) programs. Using this application, IAL researchers will be able to evaluate the average term and turnover of the leadership of FBS programs, providing UW and other institutions the opportunity to make informed decisions on future contracts. This system provides a lens for institutions, as well as the public, to begin to understand what has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry. Our team took the previously disjointed processes that included paper based records and spreadsheets, and centralized everything into one database with an intuitive web-interface. This web-application now allows the IAL staff to easily manipulate data and generate custom visualizations and reports to further their understanding of the phenomena known as the coaching carousel.

iSchool Digital Asset Management

Over the past year the Information School’s Communications Department has experienced an increased ingestion of digital photographic material; these images, which total over 5,000, were being stored on an internal network drive with no standardized naming, organizational schema structure, or embedded metadata information. As these images are imperative in promoting the iSchool’s accomplishments, achievements, advances, and offerings—in a variety of print and digital media sources—the Communications Department sought to create a digital asset management system. By fashioning hierarchal structures, naming and taxonomy standards, and metadata templates, all of which are compatible with Adobe products, I was able to create a digital asset management system and organizational structure that is mindful of its current and future users. Ultimately, this will allow for the photographic content to be more easily accessible all while stimulating workflow and collaboration in promoting the iSchool brand. How are your digital assets working for you?