The United States Forest Service has a long history of caring for the land and serving people. A significant part of that history are the foresters themselves: their memories, experiences, and stories. Every National Forest has a Heritage Program and for decades, volunteers and foresters have been collecting oral histories from retirees, volunteers, and their families. Some interviews were written down, others recorded in a variety of formats. The challenge: How to approach the preparation of these materials for storage and public access at the National Museum of Forest Service History. We worked with the Gifford Pinchot National Forest and the Museum to assess current resources and develop a sustainable process for digitization, storage, and public access. In addition to the immediate needs of the collection, we also wrote internship and volunteer handbooks and developed the business case to help sustain ongoing work at both the local and Museum levels.

Golder Associates (Golder) has over 5,000 consultants located worldwide, and works with clients in many sectors including oil and gas, mining, and waste management. One primary internal SharePoint tool Golder consultants use to share information and stay up-to-date is Collaboration Workspaces (CWS). Within each CWS, sub-sites are broken down by client sectors, technical communities, and regions; however, not much is known about how consultants use the sub-sites and if CWS meet their needs. Our team performed user behavior analysis on a user activity log in conjunction with user research for the purpose of improving users’ internal communication, efficiency, and satisfaction within five CWS sub-sites. We helped Golder better understand the user composition, user habits, important existing features, and potential improvements of these CWS sub-sites. More important, we created a methodology that is replicable, can be built upon, and will be applied to other CWS sites to further facilitate information sharing.

We CAN is a proposed nonprofit organization providing nature and animal assisted activities for youth victims of violent crimes in the greater Tacoma area. Being the victim of a crime should not be a lifelong punishment. We feel that children who participate in our programs, along with traditional therapy, should have a greater chance for successfully recovering from trauma and abuse they have had to endure. Our programs use animal assisted activities and nature adventures to help children who have experienced trauma or abuse learn to develop healthy trusting relationships to live full and productive lives.

CenturyLink Arena is responsible for maintaining over a hundred refrigerators to keep products fresh for their customers. Every broken fridge costs CenturyLink more than $1000 in replacement parts and products. Existing Device Monitoring Systems (DMSs) can be used to track fridge failures, but are difficult to navigate and require data analysis training to use. Web 10.0 has teamed with Seattle startup Ombitron Inc. to create a new platform-as-service DMS to solve these issues. Ombitron hardware detects a variety of critical metrics about a device, then Web 10.0’s Dashboard interface delivers this information to users in a streamlined and visually appealing style for at-a-glance notification. Detailed metrics and time graphs are also available for each device to track history and changes in performance. This Dashboard will be adapted to suit a wide range of devices, and is currently being considered for use by multiple companies.

Public libraries are always looking for ways to ensure that they cater to each demographic group in their communities, in particular marginalized and underrepresented groups. My project helped Wilsonville Public Library in Oregon cater to a group that previously flew under its radar. I have developed and implemented a book club at a controversial, recently-constructed women’s prison within the Wilsonville community. As the ultimate goal of the Oregon Department of Corrections is to reduce the rate of recidivism, our uncensored book material will provide for constructive discussions aimed at promoting literacy and pro-social behavior in the inmates. This book club provides an effective liaison between the Department of Corrections and Wilsonville Public Library in a way that benefits all stakeholders. Even auxiliary benefits of such a connection are apparent, as community awareness has led to several donations of books to the prison library.

Local courts noticed an increase in ‘pro se’ or self-represented litigation. In order to help better prepare these litigants, King County Superior Court judges and administration have commissioned a study to design the delivery of web-based information to better suit these users. Detailed analysis was conducted on the current website through the review of content inventories and sitemaps. Surveys of user behavior and observation were used to streamline assistance for domestic violence and consolidate Spanish language resources to facilitate ESL needs. In person testing was conducted with potential jurors to determine public perception and usability when facing tasks involving eviction, divorce, and juvenile justice. All data was compiled into a proposal for redesign, and presented to King County Superior Court as a set of recommendations for website improvement to better serve the needs of the pro se population.

Books in prisons have proven to be beneficial for the economic and mental well-being of prisoners.  However, budgets for prison libraries in the United States have been drastically cut over the past decades, even as prison populations swell.  Books to Prisoners is a Seattle-based non-profit that provides free books to prisoners across the country; it operates on donated time, books, and money to fill the 1,200 requests sent every month.  Due to its limited resources, the organization has never created an inventory of book donations or prisoner requests to assess its own needs.  This project sampled and analyzed the content of donated books and prisoner letters.  This information was used to determine the most critical service gaps and contact appropriate publishers to solicit targeted book donations.  Books to Prisoners is now better prepared to request donations, write grants, and support a national population facing dire information shortages.

Costco’s Information Systems (IS) department is a vital part of their ongoing success.  To support the company’s stellar growth, the IS department is embarking on major system enhancement projects and taking a closer look at how they manage technology projects. The team needs specific project management metrics that will help them to examine and fine-tune their project management processes over time. Our Capstone project provides Costco a framework of project management best practices, tools and metrics. This toolkit will empower Costco’s IS team to continue their strong tradition of effectively and efficiently supporting core business goals.

The Clark Memorial Library at the University of Portland underwent a major renovation beginning in May 2012 and the library collection was moved to an interim location.  In the new building, the bulk of the physical collection will be located in user-accessible compact shelving.  This project guides the transition of the collection from the interim location to the compact shelving units in the new building.  In order to avoid ongoing collection shifting in the future, the shelving plan was designed based on the anticipated growth of the collection, with larger gaps in subject areas with higher than average expected growth.  The shelving plan will guide the movers as they return the collection to the renovated building in June 2013.