The KING Broadcasting Company Photograph Collection at the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections department comprises over 5.8 cubic feet of materials including more than 1,000 photographs taken from the Dorothy Stimson Bullitt papers collection. While prior work had been done, the storage of materials and numbering conventions used were inconsistent with department standards and best practices. Project objectives included properly preparing materials for archival storage, the creation of a digital finding aid reflecting an intellectual order, renumbering materials according to department conventions, and reducing the amount of physical space taken by the collection. The results increase access to photographs that provide a unique look into early radio and television broadcasting in the Pacific Northwest as well as special events in the Seattle area. Subjects of interest include early KING personalities, local and national programs and promotions, and local events including some related to Seafair, UW, and Boeing.

The University of Washington Press is a scholarly publishing house which prints approximately 50 new titles each year in a range of academic fields. About 1,400 of these titles are currently available in physical and e-book formats, but more than 3,000 titles of the backlist are yet to be digitized. The purpose of the Physical Archives project is to help make these print books available to individual readers and library collections through digitization. Using the Press’s physical space and database, I was able to gather, organize and document the books of the archives. I reviewed and organized the collection, recorded the bibliographic data in the database, and prepared physical books for scanning. As more readers move to electronic formats and devices, this project will allow these books to reach a larger audience than they might as purely print editions.

Splaces is the first, tour-centric UW Android app that allows users to explore 154 years of the university’s rich and gritty history. This project revamps the existing three-part Spaces and Places campus tour, originally created by the UW Office of the University Architect (OUA). Historically, Spaces and Places was limited to being available as an online PDF, phone tree, and placard. Now, with Splaces, all of those are accessible in the palm of your hand. Maps, routes, and points of interest are hosted by the UW Capital Projects Office (CPO). By using their geographic information systems (GIS) we hope to show the potential of having a centralized, sustainable infrastructure for location-based data, and set a precedent for other groups and departments to follow. We would like to give special thanks to our partners at the CPO and OUA for helping make this project possible.

The Digital Public Library of America is a super-aggregator of metadata with over one million digital items available to the public, made possible through a content hub/partnership model. Digitized content from an extensive, nationwide network of small regional institutions and large digital libraries is accessible to end users through a single access point: the DPLA homepage. Through Omeka -- the online content management and digital exhibition platform -- and in accordance to DPLA guidelines, our team designed an exhibit based on the subject of Cartography composed of four sub-sections, called themes. Each theme uses high-quality images telling stories of struggles for power, scrambles for land, and desires for tangible knowledge of a vast and exciting new world. Through extensive research, rigorous editorial decisions, and meticulous metadata entry, we curated an informative, visually engaging collection highlighting forty incredible images available through the Digital Public Library of America.

The University of Washington Special Collections Library received a request from a Japanese author who was searching for archival photographs to accompany his forthcoming book on Douglas MacArthur. The author was specifically looking for photographs that linked MacArthur to American Freemasonic orders in Asia. He needed to know what Special Collections photographs were available related to the topic and detailed information about them including dates, locations and names of individuals. Confronted with thousands of unprocessed photographs, I organized the collection in accordance with the Special Collections archival process of arrangement, description and access creation. Through processing the photographs and some detective work, the author’s information needs were met. By the end of the project, 15 photographs were discovered that directly related the Seattle Nile Shrine organization to MacArthur’s subordinate officers in Japan in the 1950’s. 

The mission of UW Special Collections is to provide access to its collections for academic and research purposes while also preserving and maintaining materials for long-term preservation. However, as a public institution with limited funding and staff, UW Special Collections has acquired a number of collections which have not been thoroughly processed, essentially rendering them inaccessible to users. One such collection is the Price/Rodgers Leavenworth Collection, which documents the efforts of Ted Price and Bob Rodgers to transform the Washington town of Leavenworth into a Bavarian village to increase tourism and revitalize its failing economy in the 1960s. My project—the creation of a finding aid—will make this collection both findable and searchable on the Special Collections website, thereby increasing access to the collection for the public, a benefit to both the user and the organization.

With the influx of children entering elementary school born after 2007 (notably, the year of the first iPhone), it is increasingly important for school libraries to consider the role of electronic materials in the library. Studies have shown that elementary schools across the nation are less likely to provide eBooks to their students. Here in the West, fewer schools offer eBooks than any other region in the United States. We have created a plan for the implementation of an eCollection at Fernwood Elementary School in the Northshore School District (NSD). Together, we will meet the information needs of Fernwood’s students and help this school district move into the digital age—making NSD a model for future schools in the Pacific Northwest. Our students are digital natives. It is time for libraries and schools to address their specific needs and bridge the remaining gap between technology and education. 

Our project was assisting the new Philosophy liaison by revising the Philosophy collection development policy. To aid our revision, we performed a collection assessment and a user needs survey. We discovered unused parts of the collection, especially among the foreign language materials. We also identified services our patron group strongly desired, such as the PhilPapers database. Based on this data, we rewrote the policy. Our policy will allow the Libraries to better manage this portion of their collection and thus serve their users efficiently and effectively. Our project may possibly serve as a template for future collection development projects at the UW Libraries.

The Trumbull Library System in the town of Trumbull, Connecticut selected baseball as the theme of their annual One Book, One Town event for 2014. The theme honors the 25th anniversary of the Trumbull Little League winning the Little League World Series over the heavy favorites from Taiwan. In order to extend the conversation with patrons, I developed a program for collecting and preserving the memories of townspeople who remember or participated in the Little League World Series of 1989. This spring, I am recording the stories of townspeople in a series of story sharing sessions. The Trumbull Library System and local historical societies will receive copies of the audio in two formats, CD and on flash drive. The multiple formats and copies at multiple locations will help ensure that there are copies preserved for future researchers interested in this unique piece of local history.

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) offers free online access to over 5.5 million images and other records from organizations throughout America. With such a rich collection, discovering and contextualizing material on specific topics can be difficult for users. Our participation in the DPLA Digital Curation Pilot, creating a digital collection titled Religion in America Since 1900, will provide the DPLA with a high-quality addition to their topic-based access points. We developed a collection in Omeka using both materials from the DPLA and other digital resources as appropriate. We researched copyright status, shaped records into larger stories and themes, and developed accompanying text for the images. If selected by the DPLA, the final product will offer users an additional access point to locate material of interest, highlight historically important content from the DPLA’s partners, and support the DPLA’s goal of providing a portal for public discovery.