The Wing Luke Museum's collection of Asian and Pacific Islander oral histories encompasses over 900 interviews. Users can request digital transcripts, but audio recordings can only be accessed in-person at the Wing. For this Oral History Project, we have curated nearly 200 interviews highlighting Seattle’s Chinatown-International District and its various communities; Relevant PDF transcripts and MP3 audio files are now available online through an Oral History website. Not only is this website beneficial for local users, but it is also a tangible tool for the Wing to reach users worldwide who are interested in the Wing’s Oral History Program.

This project set out to create a linked dataset using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) data model, describing Historical Children’s Literature volumes from the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. The dataset describes both physical items and digital surrogates accessible via UW’s CONTENTdm digital collections platform, including many volumes digitized by a 2017 MLIS capstone group. The publishing of bibliographic datasets using the RDF model has the potential to bring greater exposure to library collections as this structured data can be queried across institutional and subject-area boundaries to connect users to content in new ways.

In the summer of 2017, the University of Washington’s Odegaard Library created LORE to support EWP teachers. LORE is an online bank of teaching resources, and EWP is a collection of 100-level academic writing classes. Until this winter, an assessment had never been run to tell if LORE was effective. Our team interviewed 8 current instructors who had been introduced to LORE, and who had diverse levels of LORE adoption. We investigated their shared wisdom, or their “lore,” about the online tool. Our project produced recommendations for content and services as well as a replicable assessment process for the library.

Between 1926 and 1968, a rare bookseller removed leaves from a 16th century German manuscript to sell to collectors and libraries. This process diminished the leaves’ original context and usefulness to researchers today. We tracked down 26 of these leaves in an attempt to create a digital reconstruction of the original bound manuscript and learn additional information about the anonymous author(s) of this work. Through this process, we also evaluated 24 libraries’ reproduction request policies in order to create a recommendation for best practice for digital reproduction requests of Special Collections materials for Stanford University Libraries.

The Martyn Mallory Historical Photograph collection is the legacy of Martyn Mallory (1880-1936), consisting of 2,500 positives and 1,500 glass plate negatives, depicting early 20th-Century life & topography in Idaho. It was entrusted to the Hailey Public Library in 1995 and digitized through grant funding in 2008. Our Capstone entailed migrating the digital collection of 1,717 files into the LYNX Consortium repository, crafting a controlled vocabulary at LCSH standard to describe the collection, & implementing a metadata schema using the Dublin Core standard. Bringing the collection to library standard increased its value, usability, & increased access to this historical treasure.

The University of Washington Information School Capstone is both feared and anticipated. It challenges students to actively begin the transition between academic and professional life. With the goals of innovation and improvement in mind, the iSchool wished to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Capstone Process as a whole. While several strengths were also identified, this project directly asked past, present, and future Capstone students to identify those areas in which they experienced barriers that hindered their Capstone projects. This information can then be used to the benefit of future cohorts and the iSchool as a whole.

In 2016, Seattle’s Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) started the process of digitizing their physical archive. For this project, I analyzed every item in each of the exhibitions in the digital archive and assigned metadata descriptors (tags) in order to make the exhibition items in the digital archive easier to find through online searches.

Microsoft Office Suite certification is an important tool in both personal and professional development. Certification is obtained through testing, though such tests are often inaccessible because of their cost and time consumption. To help grant equity in access to this resource, Kitsap Regional Library is working in conjunction with the Washington State Library to offer free testing to their patrons. The goal of this capstone project was to complete the research and planning necessary to implement testing at Kitsap by fall 2018.

MISO (Musical Instruments of the Seattle Opera) is a Microsoft Access database designed to track the Seattle Opera’s instrument collection. Before MISO, instruments were tracked using several spreadsheets that were inconsistent and difficult to update. The Seattle Opera realized it needed a better system when a cimbasso went missing. After a frantic search, it was discovered that the cimbasso was never missing - it had been in the Seattle Opera’s library all along. With MISO, all relevant instrument information, including location, current user and technical specifications are all combined into one location, ensuring that no instrument is lost.

With the need for teachers to focus on the common core there isn’t enough time in the day to plan multiple lessons to put these concepts into a real world context. In order to provide educator support I conducted teacher surveys to identify areas of STEAM curriculum where they need support. As a result I’ve created a Mobile Makerspace for Coupeville Elementary School. This Mobile Makerspace includes 30-45 minute STEAM lessons and all the materials needed to turn any classroom into a makerspace. This Mobile Makerspace not only supports the teachers but most importantly, it benefits the students.