The E-Rate program provides funding for libraries and schools to access affordable internet and telecommunications services. However, the participation rate of libraries is significantly lower than schools. Our project aimed to address this issue by creating a tool that would increase library participation rates. Through surveying over 60 libraries, we created multiple features for our tool to help increase library participation: an application walkthrough, discount rate calculator, peer library comparison, and many more. By making the E-Rate program more accessible to libraries, we hope to bridge the digital divide and improve the lives of those who rely on these services.

The information problem we addressed was University of Washington’s electronic theses and dissertations not being easily accessible and discoverable online. Our results included an updated workflow and code, three improved master schemas, thousands of new master’s and doctoral theses, students, and committee members now discoverable via Wikidata, and handoff documentation and a training video for library staff and future Capstone students. Having thesis records converted to an open-source linked data format improves their reliability and discoverability. Our work helps future UW CAMS and PCC professionals, and also makes the scholarship of UW graduates more accessible outside of traditional catalogs.

Carina is a two-sided matching platform for those who are in need of homecare and those who provide homecare. To address user concerns about unresponsiveness, our team conducted extensive research and user testing. Findings showed that users faced missed notifications, forgotten replies, and overlooked messages. To increase the number of successful matches, we developed innovative designs relating to an unread message summary and message notification reminders with a focus on user experience.

HEALWA is an online medical library for healthcare professionals hosted by the UW Health Sciences Library via a contract with the Washington State Department of Health. HEALWA sponsored this capstone project with the goal to increase visibility and accessibility of its resources to better serve the information needs of its users. The project encompassed the curation of eBooks for 12 of its existing professional toolkits, creation of 3 new interdisciplinary toolkits, and drafting of 4 blog articles on the online library's news page. The enhanced and newly created toolkits have the potential to facilitate research for Washington State's healthcare professionals.

IHME has identified the need to evaluate if their keyword taxonomy functionality could be enhanced to improve search experience for public users of their data catalog. The results of this evaluation are a deeper understanding of the keyword taxonomy’s current functionality, how it compares to similar data catalogs, and where valuable changes would enhance current functionality. The results will improve user experience for not only public users, but internal users as well. These changes will also support more efficient internal processes and place IHME in a solid position to grow the functionality of their keyword taxonomy over time.

TradeUW is an online shopping platform that allows University of Washington students to buy and sell secondhand clothing items while aiming to reduce waste, cost, risk of scams, and promote a safe shopping experience. These are just a few of the key information problems present in the fast fashion industry that people actively partake in. As a result with TradeUW, college students are better able to shop both efficiently and effectively while accounting for both the negative environmental and personal complications that come with clothing shopping. Our project impacts the lives of others by encouraging and promoting fashion sustainability.

We hoped to research LGBTQIA+ archives in Atlanta, Georgia. While there are many queer archives listed in Atlanta, it is actually difficult to access them. Aside from a local public library known for its efforts to reach out to LGBTQIA+ Atlantans, it’s complicated to find material for queer Southerners outside of bookstores. By identifying LGBTQIA+ archives in Atlanta, other queer Southerners should be able to locate and use these archives. Also, others will be able to take the foundation of this project and seek out queer archives in other areas of the country.

Don’t Die is a repository of interviews about video games, specifically: -the plight of marginalized voices in the video game industry/culture. -the neglected legacies of systems online that are preventing us from getting along. -the patterns of indifference in media and culture that diminish coverage of labor issues in entertainment industries. Founder David Wolinsky proposed a multi-year project to grow his website into a fully realized resource. Our project focused on the initial development of metadata and taxonomies, as well as making suggestions for future work to set the website up to exist and achieve its long term purpose.

Freelancers face numerous challenges regarding being easily recruited for work opportunities within the rapidly growing and competitive esports industry. FAE (“For Anything Esports”) is an all-in-one resource that highlights esports freelancers by giving them a dedicated platform to showcase their expertise, experience, and availability. FAE also caters to esports organizations by providing a directory consisting of unique freelancing roles for candidates to be easily identifiable and recruited for opportunities. By providing our platform to both freelancers and organizations, we are minimizing the issues that are commonly found in the esports industry, such as unfair compensation and lack of marketability.

The guide created for this capstone project aims to educate artists and creatives on the importance of file management while providing a guide for implementation. The survey sent out to artist communities found that artists (1) have a limited understanding of information organization, (2) do not follow an organization system, and (3) feel that information organization is essential. These results inspired the creation of a how-to guide for artists to follow and implement into their creative profession. The guide educates on various information organization topics specific to art and creative use with modeled examples.