The Bellingham Public Library has begun their Strategic Planning process and are interested in gathering the perspectives of the citizens of northern Bellingham, a dense and diverse population with low-income housing and a lack of critical resources, such as food, education, and living space. Through an informal American Library Association Ask Exercise, input was gathered regarding aspirations, needs, and concerns of community members and formed into service recommendations for Bellingham Public Library to better understand the aspirations of this underserved population in an attempt to redevelop services and resources to better support the community’s needs.

As part of the Oregon Folklife Network’s “Telling Our Stories” online toolkit for educating the public on how to document, archive, and share their history, I created a how-to guide for archiving and retaining value in historic family photographs, using LIS best practices. The guide covers photo preservation basics, looking for themes to assess, organize, and digitize your collection, and collecting and sharing your stories through photos. The "Telling Our Stories" Family Photo Archiving Guide helps individuals to recognize their own stories and connections to history and the value that individual and collective experiences bring to the cultural heritage landscape.

The Emma B. Andrews Diary Project consists of 19 volumes of letters and diaries from the Golden Age of Egyptology (1889-1913). Built in Omeka, the website has not been updated since 2013, yet it has accrued a wealth of content. Our project set out to restructure the information architecture, redesign the metadata by creating linked relationships, and edited the custom theme to improve usability.

Digital illiteracy persists among adults in the coastal Mississippi area the Jackson-George Regional Library System serves. Adults without computer skills cannot use the Internet to gain employment, access government services, or find healthcare providers. Their lack of basic computer skills is a barrier to accessing government programs that can help them. JGRLS does not have the human power to meet this need. A digital literacy program that trains volunteers to teach digital literacy skils to adults using the public computers and broadband capacity at JGRLS' 8 branches is warranted. The project will lay the groundwork for a digital literacy council.

Challenge: How to preserve and make accessible materials related to a Central Washington University ROTC alumni missing in Vietnam. Materials were housed in copy paper boxes and binders in the ROTC offices. Solution: Housed the materials in Archival quality boxes and folders. Had cadets scan the materials and uploaded the files to the institutional repository at Central Washington University, ScholarWorks. Impact: The information on the institutional repository will enable cadets to research San Dewayne Francisco for their reports. It will also bring greater awareness of missing servicemen, efforts to find their remains, and the need of fundraising for those efforts.

Patrons, staff, and researchers at The Seattle Public Library have difficulty finding Seattle Grunge music items in the library’s collection. The catalog keyword search, “Seattle grunge”, only produces 24 items. We amassed a Seattle Grunge Collection of both cataloged and uncatalogued materials to ensure that everyone can easily discover and access the library’s current and future holdings of music, movies, books, articles, local zines, posters, fan club newsletters, and other ephemera. We not only provided easy search and access of this collection, we also created a model that can be replicated to develop and preserve other local Seattle music collections.

Thomas Handforth was an artist, author, and winner of the 1939 Caldecott Medal. After his death, the Tacoma Public Library agreed to archive over 900 pieces of his artwork. The main objective of this capstone was to organize, digitize, and catalog the most fragile and friable pieces in the collection for online accessibility to the public. I scanned and photographed, created metadata, and integrated the digital files of his art into the library’s online catalog. For too long Thomas Handforth has been unknown. By creating this catalog, users will be able to learn more about this incredible artist.

Captain David Wilsey, M.D., was one of 27 doctors who entered Dachau concentration camp during its liberation in April 1945. They spent the next month giving medical care to former prisoners. The liberated prisoners were quarantined to prevent the spread of disease. These physicians risked their lives to bring healing to the 30,000 survivors. During his deployment, Wilsey wrote more than 280 letters home. This collection brings these materials together online for the first time. It involved metadata creation, digital curation, community engagement, and educational resource creation. The collection will be housed online permanently for the Holocaust Center for Humanity.

The DCC Curation Lifecycle model is a conceptual model created in 2009 to facilitate curation and preservation activities. Since its initial creation, the context of data (e.g. the emergence of Big Data) has changed dramatically. In this project, I studied the needs and possible fields for updating this model through a close examination of literature about the original model, relevant research and data lifecycle models, and interview materials. Based on the implications of the four most relevant lifecycle models studied, recommendations on the transformation of model structure and content are made.

Cataloging streaming audio resources ensures streaming audio content is accessible and discoverable. However, many records do not adhere to standardized file formats. These errors cause increased workload and lost work hours. Enhancement of streaming audio metadata can be addressed in multiple ways: facilitating metadata conversations with content providers, original cataloging of streaming audio resources, and creating recommended best practices. This project focuses primarily on creating best practices and demonstrating those practices in original cataloging records. Through establishing best practices for creating streaming audio metadata, this project takes an important first step toward improving accessibility and discoverability of streaming audio resources.