Accessible design improves websites for everyone. Yet many websites do not yet follow these principles, creating a barrier for people with sensory, motor, cognitive and other disabilities. The Washington Health Benefit Exchange (WAHBE) wants to create specific policies and procedures to ensure such accessibility, which federal law requires. This project kickstarts their policy work, by pulling together an online resource guide of standards, toolkits, models and best practices. The guide can be updated and shared, and reflects scholarly and popular literature, practices and expertise from national and international sources.

The collection of Mormon Missionary Diaries at the L Tom Perry Special Collections at Brigham Young University is a very difficult collection to search and find materials as there are three different databases that each have different information. The Whittaker Bibliography, the Manuscript Collection, and the Digital Collection. Each have cause confusion and frustration for both staff and patron because of the many ineffective an inaccurate searches. My project was bringing these three different databases together and transferring the metadata into a one new database.

Cutting costs while improving the patient experience of care (including satisfaction and quality), can be a challenge. Instead of creating innovative programs, health organizations can utilize existing programs. Shifting patients use of facility to mail order programs may alleviate some of these withstanding issues and improve health outcomes overall. Research that I conducted showed that past endeavors did not include patient input or entire organizational involvement. Analyzing the past year’s data, I provided the organization with the number of facility orders that can be shifted to mail order (without any impact to patients) along with a predicted forecasted trend.

Before managers at North Central Regional Library create a new program program, they need to learn more about the information needs of their employees. What skills and information do librarians and other staff need to succeed in their work? Over several months, I sought an answer to this question, interviewing librarians and administering surveys to library staff. In the end, I came up with a written report that elucidated the information needs of the library’s employees. As a result, North Central Regional Library will be able to design better training programs in the future.

This archival project, completed in conjunction with Village Theatre comprises historical perspective, inventory, arrangement, weeding, finding aids and rehousing for a minimally processed original collection of documents, photographic material and ephemera relating to their 37-year Mainstage production history in Issaquah and Everett. Deliverables include a database of collection materials with written instructions for accruals and maintenance of the remaining portions of the collection, and recommendations for further treatment such as digitization of A/V materials and options for a future digital archive.

Just Say No to Just Think Critically is an information literacy curriculum for college freshman taking a seminar-style, interdisciplinary course on drug policy. Included were lesson plans for two in-class instruction sessions, three breakout sessions with project groups, as well as a LibGuide and pre/post assessment. Grounded in critical instruction theory -- a lens especially suited to this complex topic -- the instruction goal was to frame information literacy as an empowering, lifelong mindset, not just a skillset for academic research. Concepts were applied in student projects at a harm reduction event, which also demonstrated peer-to-peer information sharing.

The King County Library System employs over 1200 staff members in 49 different branches. Our sponsors in the Staff Development Department felt that a formal mentoring program could prove beneficial in such a large, dispersed organization; but to design an effective program they needed information about staff needs and mentoring best practices. Our team gathered this information by conducting focus groups, researching mentoring literature, and benchmarking organizations’ mentoring practices. Taking all that we learned from these investigations, we built a set of recommendations that will facilitate the creation of a successful and sustainable mentoring program at KCLS.

Literary Landmarks™ are historically significant locations that pertain to literature and have been officially dedicated by United for Libraries: A Division of the American Library Association. United for Library’s Literary Landmark™ project had two gaps: an incomplete website and a lack of advocacy. To help update the website I edited 120 landmark entries to include a description, dedication date, Partner, and a separate webpage. My advocacy plan consisted of contacting several sites and encourage them to apply for Literary Landmark™ status, and starting an online Literary Landmark™ photo tag.

For my MLIS Capstone project, I examined each item in Scarecrow Video's silent film collection to correctly represent each film title, according to the rules of the Fundamental Requirements of Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Many of the titles reflected only the title of the DVD or VHS, not the titles of the films themselves. Cleaned-up records provide a more accurate reflection of Scarecrow's inventory and rental statistics, and they allow customers to more easily search the in-store database.