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.

This project is rethinking the approach for e-commerce packaging. With the growing market of e-commerce, there is a dire need to generate a sustainable approach. By utilizing Amazon’s delivery process and packaging as a use case, our team proposes a new way to help decrease the number package needed to be produced while reducing the number of incorrect recycled materials being sent to the recycling center. Through the surveys, interviews, and research, our team has redesigned the current Amazon mailers for reuse to fit the new business process geared towards sustainability.

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.

UW faculty make data-driven decisions every day. From large-scale business decisions to helping students succeed, data analytics affects the lives of everyone in the UW community. The current solution, created by UW Enterprise Reporting and Analytics, uses two portals: B.I. Portal, UW Profiles. Our solution, UW Analytics, addresses current issues such as cost and inefficiency in maintaining two distinct portals, feature underutilization, and inconsistent UW branding. UW Analytics is a one-stop-shop featuring an intuitive, streamlined UI that adheres to UW branding. Less time looking for data means more time for analyzing and making better-informed decisions.

The problem Varmada addresses is how people who purchase products online can achieve a simple and quick return process in order to save time and money. This mobile application is targeted for smartphone users living in urban areas who do not have time to return items back to a drop off center or lack the resources to do so. With few options to handle this problem, Varmada was created to create a seamless return experience. Using Varmada, users can request an item pickup within multiple time ranges and dates that work with their schedule.

With the rise in Venture Capital investments, it is necessary to provide investors with additional information apart from traditional data sources. A good investment indicator is the patent data of a company. Patents allow investors to know the technical capability and intellectual property of a company. This enables much more sound investments. However, a major drawback is the unavailability of a consolidated data source providing all the information. The project aims to resolve this by developing a novel algorithm for fast fuzzy matching of two companies between Pitchbook funding data and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) data.

This project addressed Scarecrow Video’s need for close assessment of part of its collection of 14,000+ out-of-print VHS cassettes. Records for the 500 oldest titles were transferred to an Excel workbook, and the data enhanced with copyright information, current fair market values, and notes on archival value. This information was then used to create: 180+ new “Rental by Agreement” (RBA) recommendations; a list of titles earmarked for future digitization; written suggestions for future VHS collection management; and several technical documents. This project provided Scarecrow staff with both enhanced collection management data, and tangible tools for future audits and volunteer training.