Otherworld Media is a nonprofit media production organization that creates educational programs for children. It produced a radio show “A is for Adventure” with various literary themes and genres. Otherworld wanted library scavenger hunts to tie into the radio show to encourage children to use library resources. As the needs of today’s children changed due to the pandemic, the initial designs for scavenger hunts were adapted into an outline for an online game. A programmer is using the framework of games and resources we created to complete development of the game.

Academic libraries can mindfully collaborate with higher education in prison programs and support system impacted students on their campuses. Nonetheless, barriers may arise when forging these connections. Focusing on the UW tri-campus system, this capstone drew on design thinking methods to discover some of these obstacles and generate potential solutions. The result is a project on Manifold, a digital platform that the UW Libraries and Press are currently piloting. Overall, the capstone’s goal is to serve as a starting point for the UW Libraries to consider co-creating instruction, programming, and resources with stakeholders to support current and formerly incarcerated students.

When responding to emergencies, police and firefighting organizations often miss critical pieces of information which adversely affects their response. As part of a pilot program for entrepreneurial capstone projects, Adaptive Resilience, LLC involves equal parts business and product development in an attempt to create a product that meets information needs of emergency responders and a business model to support the product. Through user-centered design practices and rapid generation and iteration of business models, we have come up with a novel solution oriented around a data-aggregation pipeline and UI that could be rapidly realized and scaled beyond a single industry application.

At Highline College Library, systematic assessment of one-shot information literacy sessions has not been prioritized due to the busy nature of community college librarianship. Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) has been at the forefront of instruction at Highline, so we set out to bring the two together in a practical way that could be implemented by providing assessment tools and EDI checklists. We worked to find resources through an environmental scan that Highline librarians could use to ensure instruction is serving the needs of all of their students, regardless of background.

Circulation staff at the Beale Memorial Library have noticed an increase in the number of interactions they have had with homeless patrons. Circulation staff have not been trained on how to meet the unique needs of homeless patrons and this lack of training often leads to tension between circulation staff and those experiencing homelessness. A webinar training discussing how best to assist homeless patrons and their unique needs is in development. By using the information provided in this webinar, circulation staff will be able to identify and address the needs of homeless patrons.

Bayou Playhouse, a small theater located in Lockport, Louisiana, holds a collection of costumes and props. However, there was no system in place to keep track of the current collection or any newly obtained items. This is an issue when putting together productions, as the organization often either wastes time looking for an item that may not be there or wastes money repurchasing an item that was already in the collection. To solve this problem, I designed a Microsoft Access database to create an inventory system. In the coming months, I will finish cataloging every item to complete the database.

Our project is helping the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICFL) modernize their existing free training resource: Alternative Basic Library Education (ABLE). While a successful program, it needs significant revision, consolidation, and updating to continue being a relevant LIS resource. We are supplying ICFL with the following documents to aid them: comprehensive content audit, user personas, and taxonomy terms/concepts to guide future content creation. The goal is to help ICFL continue providing free quality, versatile LIS resources while increasing the reach of the program to the underserved and the underrepresented in the field of library and information sciences.

Adequate and equitable library spaces and services are not available to every student attending Seattle Public Schools. Stakeholders with different priorities have resulted in SPS libraries that are chronically understaffed and underfunded. Seattle’s citizens signaled strong library support through the recent allocation of $219 million to Seattle Public Library (SPL), the city’s primary library system. This Capstone advocates for a comprehensive public-public partnership between SPL and SPS libraries to scaffold the tremendous work of Seattle's school librarians while bringing all of the assets of SPL’s world-class library system into every one of the city’s public school communities.

Bird the Gap is an outreach-oriented web mapping project to direct birdwatchers to locations currently underrepresented in crowdsourced data compiled by eBird and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. My multi-layered interactive web map uses two sets of raster data from eBird’s statistical models to identify geographic gaps in worldwide data from 2018. Using open-source software programs RStudio and QGIS, I prepared data for all 52 weeks. The scalable prototype uses Mapbox and its JavaScript library to visualize data from one week in July. Bird the Gap will assist in eBird’s ongoing mapping projects, which support scientific research and conservation efforts.

Books for Littles (BFL) is an online resource helping parents and educators engage kids with hard topics and social justice using children’s books. My wonderful sponsor, Ashia Ray, launched BFL in 2014. Today, the organization is flourishing, but has become burdensome for one person to manage. I worked with Ashia on a system to enhance collaborative efforts and reduce their individual workload, developing an efficient process for volunteer recruitment and support, a centralized resource describing specific tasks, and detailed documentation for complex tasks. I also researched grant funding to potentially cover future operational costs. Raising Luminaries logo used by permission.