The Brigantine Yankee Catalog Project aims to catalog and embed metadata for photographs documenting the sixth sailing voyage of the Brigantine Yankee through the Pacific Islands. The photographs had been digitized but were not cataloged at the Burke Museum, making them inaccessible. By cataloging the photographs, our team was able to increase this collection’s accessibility not only for the museum staff but also, more importantly, for Pacific Islander communities. These communities feature prominently in the images but their identities and cultures were not always documented properly; providing access and inviting input from them will lead to more accurate and respectful representation.

Sno-isle Libraries, which serves Snohomish and Island counties in Washington state, has seen a dramatic increase in the number of patrons who are struggling with homelessness due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To address the needs of this vulnerable population, I have compiled a community asset map by identifying local nonprofits, government agencies, shelters, McKinney-Vento Liaisons, social workers, and public schools that work with individuals and families struggling with homelessness. This document will be distributed to all managers and librarians within the Sno-isle Libraries system and will be used for future outreach to create a stronger, better social safety net.

Japanese seed beads are identified by the color code assigned to each product. Three primary manufacturers assign their own alphanumeric codes, while a wholesaler combined all three identification systems into a new system. This creates confusion among consumers because these systems are not well understood and are not yet cross-referenced. My ontology is the foundation of a knowledge base that will aid in more accurate identification of colors between manufacturer numbers and the corresponding product in the wholesaler’s system. This resource will facilitate accurate color-matching and increase awareness of the variety of seed beads available.

The Geology Library Database was created for students, staff, and volunteers in the UW Burke Museum Geology and Paleontology Department to facilitate library resource discovery. The database was created in FilemakerPro and utilized linked data to allow for easy browsing. It also makes use of its own controlled vocabulary and fully documented schema. As part of its creation, over 250 records were entered to test its capabilities. Once it is fully populated, the database will increase ease of access to materials for the volunteers who do not have the same level of access to UW Libraries as their paid colleagues.

St. Mark’s Cathedral has limited record management and archives. Many important records, documents, and artifacts have been kept in boxes located in storage rooms and employee offices. I assessed Cathedral records and completed an in-depth finding aid on the archive and its contents. The resulting finding aid will provide a framework for future students or other archivists on where the project has left off and possible next steps. St. Mark’s stakeholders will have an accessible, easy-to-navigate aid of what contents are in the archive and the future work needed to complete the archive.

The University of Washington Libraries' vision is to become an inclusive and equitable organization. Through our capstone, we highlight the historical, political, and cultural aspects of Black experiences and envision the impact of showcasing student and community research in library spaces. Through interviews and in partnership with the Research Commons, the Open Scholarship Commons, and the Assessment and Planning department, our project frames how to implement programming and outreach inspired by the voices of UW’s Black community. We present four recommendations to UW Libraries addressing space, community engagement, and the power of listening to and affirming Black perspectives and experiences.

In order to provide inclusive service, UW Libraries needs to provide diverse collections with plentiful materials by, for, and about historically underrepresented groups. Most collection diversity resources are aimed at school and public libraries. My project focused on researching how other academic libraries have addressed DEI in their collections in order to provide methods suitable for UW’s large scholarly collection. I analyzed collection development policies incorporating DEI and conducted a literature review. With information about assessment methods and strategies to obtain more diverse materials, UW Libraries has access to a menu of possibilities to enhance collection diversity.

The UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons (OSC) plans to expand its services to better support members of the academic community performing public and community-engaged research and scholarship. To inform the future development of the OSC, this project investigated the current state of public and community-engaged scholarship at the UW and beyond through a literature review, environmental scan, and interviews. Findings from this project will inform how the OSC develops its virtual and physical presence, the services and resources it offers, and how it fits into the University's broader efforts to support work with and for the community and public.

Many traditional entrepreneurship support networks exclude people from marginalized backgrounds. My research identified existing library resources that support entrepreneurship but no specific resources for marginalized entrepreneurs. From my research and conversations with librarians, I was able to identify a need: a resource designed specifically for supporting entrepreneurs from marginalized communities. I created a toolkit for librarians in Washington state to use in supporting entrepreneurs from marginalized communities. By using my toolkit, librarians in Washington will be able to support entrepreneurs from marginalized backgrounds. In turn, entrepreneurs and small business owners from marginalized backgrounds will be able to grow their businesses.

The Digital Theological Library (DTL) has a growing Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) collection that needs to be made accessible to subscribing schools and individuals as physical access to collections has been limited due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The CDL project is an effort to increase accessibility by digitizing books and then storing the physical copies so that only the digitized copy is accessible by users. The DTL has purchased, scanned, and uploaded thousands of print volumes. Reagan Callahan was responsible for linking approximately 3,000 digitized books in Dropbox to the library’s LibGuides and activating those records within OCLC World Share.