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.

On March 22, 2014, a massive landslide engulfed the Steelhead Haven neighborhood near Oso, Washington. In seconds, Steelhead Haven was gone and State Route 530, the primary road to nearby Darrington, was buried in debris. 43 people died. In the weeks that followed, the Darrington community contributed vital expertise, equipment, and support to search and recovery efforts. Since then, the Darrington Historical Society has launched an ambitious project: development of an archive at UW Digital Collections to document the community’s experiences (http://content.lib.washington.edu/landslidesweb/). We made three significant contributions to the project: First, we created a collection development policy that will guide the archive’s growth. Second, we designed a tracking system to organize and manage the collection. Third, we greatly increased the size of the archive by processing a backlog of photos, documents, and maps. The community’s recovery will be a long one; our work ensures their story won’t be forgotten.

In 2010, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) was required to send records from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) to the newly formed American Indian Records Repository (AIRR). This event was based on a judiciary order in the 1996 case Cobell v. Norton (now Cobell v. Salazar) which successfully argued that the United States Federal Government was lax in its handling and storage of these records and the issues related therein. Until now, NARA has been unaware as to the extent of AIRR’s holdings and has not had a way to assist information seekers in locating their needed documents. Through data sorting and analysis, I created a finding aid which now makes it possible for NARA to assist those seeking their educational, personal, and financial records.

In 2012, the Bainbridge Public Library, the Kitsap Regional Library, and the people of Bainbridge Island began working on a digital archive of the Bainbridge Island Review between the years 1941 to 1946. The only newspaper in the country to oppose the incarceration of Japanese American citizens for the duration of the war, the Bainbridge Island Review published pictures and letters from incarcerees, as well as reflected the values of their community, that largely believed incarceration of Japanese Americans was unjust and immoral. Still today, the people of Bainbridge Island are dedicated to “Nidoto Nai Yoni”, which means "Let It Not Happen Again". My task was to locate & contact individuals and organizations that might use their influence to raise awareness of the archive and its unique story. Conducting this outreach has resulted in multiple organizations recognizing the archive’s value, and a promise that they will spread the knowledge contained within.

In 2014, the EMP Museum launched Indie Game Revolution, the first large-scale museum exhibit dedicated to the history, art and culture of independent video games. The EMP desired to add the games displayed to their permanent collection, but had never before archived digital-native video games. Building off a pre-capstone project to determine what could be preserved for each game while working within the EMP’s scope and budget, our capstone team prepared 30 games for the collection. For each game, we archived DRM-free versions of the game files; recorded hours of gameplay footage; created a catalog record in a custom metadata schema built for the project; and, when possible, conducted oral history interviews with the game’s developers. These packages will not only preserve the games but help future researchers understand the era’s independent game development.

In 1492, Spain issued the Alhambra Decree, mandating that all Spanish (Sephardic) Jews –about 200,000– leave the country. They continued to speak a language known as Judeo-Spanish or Ladino in their new lives. The language has survived the intervening centuries, and present-day Seattle counts several native Ladino speakers among its population. Devin Naar, PhD, and the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies at the University of Washington are collecting and digitizing Ladino documents to preserve and share this unique aspect of Sephardic Jewish culture. We developed a prototype for the Sephardic Studies Digital Library and Museum. We then conducted user testing for a web portal to lead interested researchers and community members from the Stroum Center’s website into the digital collection, which is hosted by UW Libraries. We have used our expertise in digital preservation and metadata best practices to provide project leaders with a list of recommendations.

The Tseltal Maya are an Indigenous people living in the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico who are inheritors of a rich Mayan culture but experience extreme poverty. One of the many challenges they face is the loss of language and culture in the face of encroaching globalization and assimilation into the Mestizo culture. The Tseltal House of Wisdom will hold what will be the world's largest collection of Tseltal language materials. However, the current conditions in which the materials are stored, as well as a jungle environment, present the difficult task of organization and preservation. Through a partnership with the One Equal Heart Foundation, we traveled to Chiapas to assess their newly constructed building and collection to offer recommendations for Collection Development, Classification, Environmental Controls, and Technology. We hope the Tseltal House of Wisdom grows into a vital resource for the community as they continue to strengthen their language and culture.

Imagine working with a community that has no word in their language for library. The Tseltal Mayan people in Chiapas, Mexico have recognized the benefits and necessity of a community knowledge house. Currently, potential materials are stored across 600-square-miles and need to be collected in a central location and organized. More than an archive, this location is meant to be a community center where Tseltal cultural materials can be accessed and shared. In conjunction with the One Equal Heart Foundation, our team designed recommendations for increasing access and collection development in order to support the community’s cultural and linguistic preservation. The delivered manual of recommendations includes examples of indigenous and Latin American libraries to inspire community leaders as they envision the future of their knowledge house.