Sno-Isle Libraries consists of 23 community libraries that serve customers in Snohomish and Island counties in Washington state. This project addressed how library staff can better connect people in those communities experiencing social services needs to nearby resources. The primary deliverable for this project was a resource guide for each Sno-Isle library and one combined guide for the Whidbey Island branches. Supporting documents include a social services events calendar and content for signage promoting the libraries’ new guides. The information provided to staff will help them to more quickly and accurately connect patrons to resources provided by community organizations.

Working with the collection development librarians at the Washington Talking Book & Braille Library in Seattle, I doubled the number of titles in their nonfiction collection relating to bullying, discrimination and abuse. My challenge was to build an inclusive collection written by and for the LGBTQ community, people of color, religious minorities and other disadvantaged groups. The 39 books purchased for this project will be produced in audiobook and braille versions and added to the InterLibrary Loan collection of The National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled at the Library of Congress.

Tacoma Community House (TCH) offers a variety of services to the community, including adult English and education classes. Many clients expressed a need for materials to help them learn English and books in their native languages. Our solution was to create a self-sufficient library on site that will grow over time with a focus on bilingual books and multicultural materials. In addition, we created a dashboard with online resources in English and world languages that is available to all TCH clients. Both the physical library and dashboard will allow clients to access resources that will help them meet individual goals.

Teen social media use and teen mental health struggles have been on the rise for many years. This correlation has created a great deal of concern but there has been little study into the content of teen social media information behavior. The Twitter accounts of 77 teens were analyzed for mental health related content finding that these teens were suffering significant stress in their daily lives, struggling with social relationships, turning to celebrities for advice and information, and that teens with an active focus for their social media information behavior were less likely to share mental health related posts.

The LIS Mental Health Collective is an informal group of librarians and information professionals who seek to create a space to connect with others over topics of mental health. As the collective and its activities grow, so does the need for a centralized location for information. A website offers a convenient and accessible solution to this problem, bringing together resources about the collective and the topic of mental health overall. Through the website built through this capstone project, information professionals have an accessible entry point for joining the conversation about an important area of well-being.

In our capstone we wanted to engage patrons as participants in the learning process of an exhibit, rather than just as viewers. The New Soviet Child is an interactive user-collaborative exhibit that is meant to elicit patron responses as a learning mechanism. We believe that by having patrons engage with the material and offer their own interpretations, an exhibit can become a powerful tool for practicing critical thinking skills. The Pamela K. Harer Russian Children’s Book Collection was chosen for its vivid imagery that conveys the cultural and political changes of the late Russian Empire and early Soviet Union.

The correspondence of Cardinal Richelieu was last compiled in the 19th century. That collection is acknowledged as incomplete and biased; underrepresented are letters from aristocratic women whose influence over events might not be fully understood. To remedy this, I have visited archives in Europe and the US to identify and photograph letters to and from Richelieu that were not included in the Avenel compilation. I have begun to transcribe, TEI-encode, and publish these letters in a digital archive, and will upload the teiHeader metadata to correspSearch, making this valuable historical information more accessible and compatible with modern research methods.

The Seattle Chamber Music Society’s (SCMS) new move has made way for the new Toby Saks Sheet Music Library, a 1,272-piece collection of solo and chamber music that was once Toby Saks’, a renowned cellist and founder of the SCMS. To organize and preserve the music and annotations, I constructed a five-tier classification system, wrote collection management recommendations, created a preservation and conservation resource guide, improved the searchability of the catalog, and labeled the scores, housed in archival folders. The collection is now browsable, usable and accessible to SCMS staff, visiting musicians, and community supporters for years to come.

Readers ready to transition from one reading collection to another may find themselves in a new part of the library, unfamiliar with its layout and unsure of popular authors and titles within their new collection. To fill this knowledge gap, our group partnered with North Central Regional Library. We created twelve patron read-alike guides, six transitioning from Middle Grade to Young Adult and six from Young Adult to Adult, and an additional librarian guide, with information on all of the books from the patron guides. With our documented processes, NCRL can recommend transitional reading material for future popular books.

As more industries leverage real-time 3D creation, new roles with skill sets geared towards this technology are emerging all the time. For Unreal Engine, this generates an audience of learners with diverse and unique information needs. Unreal Engine taxonomy is the basis for unifying learning materials across sources. By providing standardized terms for Unreal Engine components, it is easier to surface relationships between various learning sources such as webinars, documentation, and online learning courses. Relating this taxonomy with learning skills through ontology strengthens paths and connects users in emerging roles with the learning materials they need.