Our planet is in crisis. The twenty first century is the hottest on record and we’re already seeing drought, increased natural disaster events and mass extinction. At this rate, the world that our children grow up in will be very different from what we have today - and we need to include them in the effort to preserve our planet. EcoQuest is a trivia game that teaches children about four animal ambassadors whose habitats and lives are impacted by climate change. The trivia questions follow a proven pattern for inspiring action: learning about an ambassador to build empathy, learning how climate change affects their well-being, and providing ways that kids can reduce their carbon footprint and, in turn, help the animal ambassador. We believe that, if kids can find a passion for the preservation of our planet, they will incorporate it into their daily lives, for the rest of their lives.

We are working with the School of Environment and Forest Science (SEFS) at University of Washington towards the mission of making environmental data accessible to Native American people. The researchers at SEFS have collected large data sets related to land cover, hydrology and precipitation to learn carbon emissions and absorption in that area. The challenge that they currently face is to make this scientific data available to the Native Americans in a format that they can relate with and interact. In order to facilitate this, we have integrated the existing environmental and ecological data and created data visualizations as a POC to ascertain that this process can be automated with the real time data. We have also prototyped user-friendly dashboard to present this information to the indigenous people in an intuitive way so that they can evaluate the health of their land and make better decisions about their environment.

In 1941, a group of Seattle citizens joined together to create the Friends of The Seattle Public Library, a non-profit which advocates, educates, and raises funds on behalf of The Seattle Public Library. The Friends group has been and still is influential in supporting The Seattle Public Library by supporting existing library programs, funding new library programs, improving library facilities, and purchasing tools and technologies. I have partnered with the Friends of The Seattle Public Library to create a digital collection as well as training materials for future volunteers. The organization has archival files from its past but has no method for managing these materials. Therefore, I selected and digitized documents to create the start of an online repository, using Omeka, of key documents from the organization’s history. These documents shed light and provide unique perspectives on the organization, the library, and the history of Seattle.

We collaborated with the Pilchuck Glass School to survey, assess and curate a collection of their library resources to be properly preserved, described and made accessible for research. These resources include an archive of DVDs that consist of artist demonstrations dating back to the early 1980’s and ephemeral items such as museum catalogues from all over the world. We delivered a detailed strategy plan for the preservation of these items, including a collection development policy to guide the future development of the library. Our hope is that with this foundation in place Pilchuck will be able to apply for grant funding to continue the preservation process.

In 2013, Western Washington University’s Office of University Residences began creating a departmental intranet. As of December 2015, though the intranet was up and running, staff were not confident working within it. Administrators worried that a lack of training would lead to a disorganized intranet. My Capstone sought to build staff enthusiasm and confidence around the intranet, giving them the skills to add content in ways that ensure easy access to well-organized content. I collected staff feedback, which I used to develop and implement two in-person intranet trainings. Trainings focused on skill acquisition as well as active discussion about the intranet. I also created supporting documentation and recommendations for the future. Staff evaluations of these trainings were encouraging, and this in-person training will be incorporated in new employee orientations. This Capstone helped to build energy and discussion around the intranet, and will assist with its long-term success.

Caldera is an Oregon-based nonprofit that provides mentoring to students through arts and environmental programming. Its staff works with youth year-round for seven years, starting in middle school and continuing through high school graduation. The White House recently recognized Caldera as one of only twelve nonprofits to receive the National Arts and Humanities Youth Program (NAHYP) Award. As the organization celebrates its 20-year anniversary, its stakeholders have become critically aware of the need for an organized, centralized digital image repository to serve as an archive of organizational history and enable discovery to promote future work. Currently, its digital images exist across upwards of ten poorly organized hard drives. For my Capstone project, I have assessed Caldera’s collection and available technology and developed a long-term project plan for establishing a repository. This plan includes recommendations on ingest, preservation, and discovery.

The Bancroft Library on the University of California, Berkeley campus is one of the most heavily used repositories of Western Americana in the United States. Our project makes thousands of manuscript items and printed materials relating to Indigenous communities of present-day California more approachable, searchable, and accessible. With assistance and feedback from members of Indigenous communities in California and subject specialists, we have created a cohesive, detailed guide listing individual titles of items with links to their related collections, catalog records, and finding aids. Our records are organized by language family, and again by four categories we created: Lifeways (physical culture), Worldview (relationships, geographic location, and activism), Mythology & Storytelling (narrative representations), Language (linguistic materials), and General (all material not appropriate for other groupings). We hope our project assists in the preservation and revitalization of traditional culture and language through increased knowledge, respect and understanding of our California communities.

Investigating the Status of Anime Collections in Public Libraries As anime grows in popularity, so grows demand for access. Anime conventions, such as Seattle’s SakuraCon, bring together fans to celebrate, discuss, and watch anime; and websites such as Crunchyroll provide legal access online. Public access through libraries is also important, particularly to people who cannot attend conventions or pay for streaming services, and to provide this access it is necessary to determine how metadata systems created for print media can be redesigned to accommodate the increasingly visual and mobile nature of global information. Specifically, what are the challenges and needs of developing, cataloging, organizing, and providing access to anime collections in public libraries? This project’s analysis of a survey sent to 248 American public libraries identifies areas where access to anime can be improved. By highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the current systems, this project lays the foundation for future work to create better metadata systems for anime. Thomas Disher—Residential MLIS

What about officiated sports makes them all the same? What makes them different? Perhaps the rulebooks used to govern them can tell. Regulated sports offer controlled environments in which participants operate for fame, fortune, self-improvement, camaraderie, and other reasons. Rulebooks not only shape these environments, but also regulate behavior within them. With society as the oyster and our human passions as grains of sand, how do the official rules of sports help culture our pearls? I took a whack, a shot, a leap into modeling sports, from the perspective of the humble sports rulebook. In my research, I explore why and how to go about deriving a genre-based model of sports. I also identify possible applications of this model serving diverse audiences including scholars, policy analysts, and athletes. Rulebooks have long been used to organize knowledge on sports – what’s needed now is a better way to extract this knowledge.

Currently teachers use tedious methods of note-taking such as paper journals, post-its, general note-taking apps and even memory. With elementary school class sizes increasing as well as the emphasis of individualization, keeping track of every student becomes a significant challenge. To face this challenge, we proposed to build a cloud-based web-application that allows elementary school teachers to quickly take notes on students while also providing skill-tracking and rubric management. The goal of Jot is to provide teachers a note-taking experience that allows them to track various aspects of an individual student. Our application aims to make an impact by ensuring that there are notes taken on each and every student leaving no one behind. By helping organize student notes, skills and creating reminders, we know that Jot will help teachers better guide the future of our children.