Seattle Prep will celebrate its 125th anniversary next fall. Establishing an archives fulfills a need for a program dedicated to the collection, organization, and preservation of items that document the history of Seattle Preparatory School. The archives will connect the present Seattle Prep community with the past, by making these materials accessible, and promoting their use for publications, exhibits, and research. This project began with a preliminary inventory of historical items throughout the Seattle Prep campus, in order to plan for the space and supplies needed for proper archival storage. Boxes of items were moved onto new shelving and prioritized for future processing. Archival policies were drafted including a Mission Statement, Collection Policy and Access Policy. Finally, a Long Term Plan was drawn up, giving direction to archival work that will be done, with a unique focus on student involvement.

The development of robust support for digital scholarship--work that focuses on the juncture of technology and traditional humanities and social science scholarship--is an increasingly important role of academic libraries. UW students and faculty have been and are doing innovative work in this area, but
support from the library and other campus groups has been inconsistent. In consultation with the UW
Libraries' Digital Scholarship Task Group, we conducted a needs assessment of faculty and graduate
students working on digital projects. Through a series of focus groups, interviews, and reviews of
successful programs at other institutions, we have identified key needs as well as potential training and
tools to meet those needs. Our key recommendations include: dedicated physical space for scholars and faculty to do their work, centralized and visible support for those seeking guidance, project matchmaking to pair scholars with ongoing projects, front-loading programs early in the academic year, and institutional and leadership consistency.

According to a recent national study of ebook usage, between 2013 and 2014 demand for ebooks grew more among middle school students than any other educational group (School Library Journal, 2014). Gildersleeve Middle School is BYOD (bring your own device) but the library’s collection includes only two ebooks. Our project was to develop a complete proposal for an ebook collection that would significantly expand the existing collection and reflect the culturally and linguistically diverse student population. We developed a proposal that detailed students’ information needs, evaluated several vendors, proposed specific titles for acquisition, developed a budget, and outlined innovative ways to promote the new collection. Now, thanks to this project, the librarians at Gildersleeve have a complete proposal for developing a new ebook collection, as well as a list of recommended ebooks to purchase. The only thing left for them is to implement the proposal and grow their ebook collection.

Our planet is in crisis. The twenty first century is the hottest on record and we’re already seeing drought, increased natural disaster events and mass extinction. At this rate, the world that our children grow up in will be very different from what we have today - and we need to include them in the effort to preserve our planet. EcoQuest is a trivia game that teaches children about four animal ambassadors whose habitats and lives are impacted by climate change. The trivia questions follow a proven pattern for inspiring action: learning about an ambassador to build empathy, learning how climate change affects their well-being, and providing ways that kids can reduce their carbon footprint and, in turn, help the animal ambassador. We believe that, if kids can find a passion for the preservation of our planet, they will incorporate it into their daily lives, for the rest of their lives.

Community members turn to their public libraries for reliable health information. Public library staff must remain aware of the most relevant resources and services to refer their patrons to, though many libraries have limited resources to dedicate to staff continuing education on this topic. The National Network of Libraries of Medicine Pacific Northwest Region (NN/LM PNR) meets this need by providing free continuing education support regarding consumer health to public library staff and other information professionals in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington states. This project engaged public library staff in Idaho in focus groups and interviews to learn more about their current efforts, needs, and perceptions regarding community health information and services. An analysis of these findings led to recommendations for NN/LM PNR to strengthen their outreach to public libraries in Idaho and elsewhere, to enhance local library responsiveness to community health information priorities.

We are working with the School of Environment and Forest Science (SEFS) at University of Washington towards the mission of making environmental data accessible to Native American people. The researchers at SEFS have collected large data sets related to land cover, hydrology and precipitation to learn carbon emissions and absorption in that area. The challenge that they currently face is to make this scientific data available to the Native Americans in a format that they can relate with and interact. In order to facilitate this, we have integrated the existing environmental and ecological data and created data visualizations as a POC to ascertain that this process can be automated with the real time data. We have also prototyped user-friendly dashboard to present this information to the indigenous people in an intuitive way so that they can evaluate the health of their land and make better decisions about their environment.

With it becoming more difficult to treat acrophobia (fear of heights) through vivo (‘in life’) exposure therapy, how can we provide an exposure therapy treatment that utilizes virtual reality so that those suffering from acrophobia (fear of heights) can gradually overcome these fears in a safe, inexpensive, and practical manner? Everest has created a virtual reality experience that is geared towards those three traits. Powered by the Oculus Rift and other VR headsets, Everest separates exposure therapy treatment into 3 stages that will help gradually treat all levels of acrophobia. With this new way for exposure therapy treatment, acrophobia patients will no longer have to overcome their fears in real life situation that risk their health and wellbeing. Instead, this inexpensive virtual reality substitute will allow its users to overcome their fear at their own pace and in the safety of their own home.

In the realm of online content retrieval, understanding user intentions based on search behaviors is essential to connecting customers to the content they seek. Adobe Systems recently acquired Fotolia, a digital asset supplier, to more efficiently provide their customers with quality images and videos from inside their ecosystem. Working with Adobe Stock, we accessed all of their query and content engagement data collected to date. In this formative analysis, we applied natural language processing to search terms. Results were paired with multiple metrics of user interaction associated with Adobe’s content. These data were grouped, or clustered, to reveal hidden layers of similarity across queries. These clusters, representing similar user intentions, help identify Adobe’s underperforming segments of customer interests and behaviors. Once identified, treatments such as user interface modifications, search algorithm changes, or query refinement suggestions can be targeted to queries in the same cluster. This will enhance the Adobe Stock user experience¬ increasing customer retention, satisfaction, and spending.