The Zines on Zoom events served to promote the Washington Center for the Book’s project, Sheltered in Place: COVID-19 Zine Diaries Project. We organized a focus group and a workshop to teach adults about zine culture and zine-making with the goal of inspiring them to create a zine to submit to the Sheltered in Place project. In these two virtual events, we celebrated zines and highlighted their ability to both exemplify and preserve human expression. We hoped to help participants process their feelings during the pandemic in a flexible and creative format.

Our project centered around creation of student training and documenting progress for the Peer Education Program (PEP), a new model of student employment at Odegaard Library based around peer mentorship. Our deliverables included a You Should Know About learning experience for Libraries' staff, training modules for the first PEP cohort, and a Toolkit to act as an introductory resource for those interested in the project. This project helped to promote the PEP initiative, train new student employees, and create a guide for project duplication.

Interest in Portuguese Studies is growing, as evidenced by a new Minor in Portuguese Language and Luso-Brazilian Studies at the University of Washington. Previously, Portuguese was only taught to the 200-level course. Now, students are researching in Portuguese and can access a collection with 300 items published in Brazil, Portugal, Mozambique, and two LibGuides with digital collections and repositories from Lusophone countries. This project aimed to improve the Portuguese studies collections, teaching, and research support services to meet students' information needs.

Schools have access to databases through public libraries, but students and teachers utilize few of them. Our project raised awareness of two databases that third grade dual language teachers and students were not already using: World Book Online Kids and Britannica Library Children. Our curriculum map showed teachers which features and articles align with their science curriculum and standards, while a video compared and contrasted the two, making it easier for teachers to add these resources into corresponding lessons. A video tutorial for students showed them how to access Britannica so they could use it independently.

The pandemic affected almost every part of our lives, especially social services that were delivered in person. We conducted a longitudinal research study interviewing 20 Washington State public librarians during the pandemic and tracked how their programming shifted throughout the year. We found three main themes that surfaced in our data – job satisfaction, changes to programming, and rethinking the profession once the world is "back to normal." We plan to ultimately disseminate our findings in a published paper to help librarians learn successful programming options to meet the needs of their communities.

My Capstone Project was concerned with information literacy among public library users, and produced educational and informational resources. These resources consisted of two public programs concerning the ways in which people navigate and share information online. The first provided an online security overview, focusing on how cookies and personal data are used by websites and social media, along with tools to protect their privacy. The second covered digital minimalism, helping attendees find and discuss ways to achieve a healthier balance in their online activities. Both programs were well received and have resulted in patrons taking control of their online behavior.

Queer Air is a podcast that explores queer archival materials within the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections, alongside guest speakers who are also involved within the archival field and/or queer community. Queer Air’s second season is a continuation of a previous Capstone project and seeks to create more visibility for UW’s queer collections and provide alternative ways to access resources. Queer Air lets patrons interact with the UW’s queer collections by allowing them to listen to the podcast’s hosts discuss collection materials, their provenance, and the significance of these histories for the past, present, and future.

Similar race and ethnicity classifications are needed to identify health disparities between different groups. There are 3 broad categories of race and ethnicity classifications - surveys using versions of the OMB 1977 standards, using versions of the OMB 1997 standards, and datasets with non-standard classifications. Even datasets that use an expanded version of the OMB 1997 standards (with specific ethnicities) exclude some identities. Using specific ethnicities that people identify as results in fewer blank and “Other” responses for race and ethnicity questions. A more inclusive and consistent collection of race/ethnicity data would support research to address health disparities.

Pasadena City College offers a Library Technology Certificate Program which prepares students for Library Paraprofessional positions in all types of libraries. Currently, the required coursework includes introductory classes to library services like reference, access, and technical services. As a former participant of this program, I saw an opportunity to design lesson plans and assignments within the courses offered that incorporate digital storytelling and instructional design concepts. The curricular content developed for this project will help students learn practical skills to design digital resources and apply strategies for storytelling that create personal connections, regardless of their role in a library.

Renton Technical College takes pride in the racial diversity of its student body. But is the library’s fiction collection representative of that diversity? In this audit, it was found that while RTC’s student body is 69% students of color, 88% of books in the fiction collection have White authors, and 81% have White main characters. This resulted in our recommendation to RTC’s library: increase the percentage of books by BIPOC authors by 10% by the end of 2022. This audit data will help inform the library’s collection development in the future to better meet student needs.