University of Washington Libraries’ Special Collections is the largest repository of its kind in the Pacific Northwest. After receiving a Capital Projects Award from UW Libraries to fund the installation of compact shelving in a room in the sub-basement of Allen Library, it added 3,000 cubic feet of shelving space for its archival collections. With newly acquired archival collections arriving daily and available space at a premium, the department needed a plan for how this new space was to be used and a person to help implement that plan. For my project, I analyzed collection data, environmental reports, and staff input to develop a criteria for determining which collections should be moved into this new space. Using that criteria, I identified collections to be moved, prepared them accordingly, and moved them to the new space-updating database records and creating a shelf-list and shelf-map in the process.

I partnered with the Yakima Valley Libraries (YVL) in order to assess and evaluate their Spanish-language collection and how they select for that collection. Around the United States and Canada, there has been a trend of low number of library materials in Spanish even when the community in which the public library serves has a significant Spanish speaking population. There are many interwoven factors as to why this occurs including funding and community interest. YVL has made extraordinary strides in improving their general collection development and want to continue to improve their Spanish-language materials and services. My project provides an evaluation of how well their existing Spanish-language materials are circulating and suggestions on how to improve the collection in order to better serve their Spanish speaking community.

The Baylor University Libraries need to provide relevant, meaningful library instruction sessions for 90 course sections of ENGL 1304: Thinking, Writing, & Research, a first year English course required by most of Baylor’s undergraduate programs, without overloading any single librarian and creating continuity between instructing librarians. In this project, I explore the content/practices currently used in ENGL 1304 library instruction sessions and the needs/expectations of their graduate level student instructors, who teach 60% of the sections. The gathered information is used to create a set of new standardized learning outcomes that form the foundation of an instruction request form.

Classification, whether it be for groceries, books, music or the countless other commodities that require effective browsing and retrieval, bring with them the challenge of organizing materials in a coherent manner. Console and computer games are no different in that respect, but provide an additional challenge. As an interactive medium, games are largely defined by the choices and actions that players are allowed to make. The Steam Achievement Classification Analysis Project is a quantitative exploratory analysis that utilizes the rewards given to players in the form of “achievements”, and by way of text-mining and clustering games based on those achievements, provides insight into how thematically similar games differ in the tasks players are directed to accomplish. As the research shows, although existing tags and categories can reasonably define groups of interactive games, those groupings can often belie serious variations in the interactive dimension of those games.

During the Japanese occupation in the early 1900s, around 300 Koreans fled the homeland to Cuba to find a better life. Since 2015, University of Washington East Asia Library (EAL) has collected digital photographs of these Korean immigrants in Cuba. The library needed metadata for this collection and was hoping to develop a research guide on these immigrants. To meet these needs, I organized the collection and created metadata for each photograph. In addition, I researched resources on these immigrants and organized them by the media type. To maintain continuity for future projects, all the processes and rules were documented as well. This Capstone project shed light on the lives of the earlier generations of Korean immigrants in Cuba and their family gatherings. EAL webpage now provides online access to the digital photograph collection and a list of research resources regarding these immigrants.

In July of 2011, Washington adopted the Common Core State Standards. Schools across the state have since been working to implement these new standards and establish a platform for learning and growth. Due to implementation still being in its earlier stages, there is a strong need for programs that will develop needed information literacy skills to satisfy these standards. The “4 Winners” are a part of an information literacy program that I designed to build critical research and evaluation skills in 4th, 5th, and 6th graders. In this digital age, students must conduct their own research in an effective and critical manner. Working with Montlake Elementary School, the “4 Winners” Information Literacy Program has been designed to be used by instructors/librarians and can be adapted to a variety of learning environments. This program develops invaluable researching skills that students will need in order to be successful throughout their lives.

My Capstone project is focused on the development of the instruction and illustration of two education programs for the Learning Theater; an extension of the Gottesman Library at the Teachers College of Columbia University. The Learning Theater is at the forefront of innovative technology, education, and immersive learning. I provided two multi-media rich programs for implementation at the theater, titled Genre Journey and History Walks. Genre Journey, a program geared toward middle school aged students distinguishes the differences between six literary genres while students explore creative and narrative writing, character context adaptation, and empathy. History Walks juxtaposes the textbook account of The Civil Rights history with the personal narratives of the same history; paralleled to emphasize and feature silenced and underrepresented voices from this historical era. These programs were created with evocative learning objectives in collaboration with the newest technologies in order to promote content for long-term understanding and life-long learning.

As the county’s legislative branch, the King County Council represents the people, interests and issues of county constituents in Washington State. The resultant working papers of Council members, committee meeting minutes and agendas are archived at the King County Archives. Although arranged according to the principle of provenance and described at the series level, Committee meeting records and Council member files lack consistency across Committee and Council member names, dates, and covered topics. Finding Aids are also brief or unavailable, making this collection difficult to use. To address these information problems, our project designed templates for Finding Aids and Processing Plans along with a taxonomy for use by Archives staff to effectively integrate new accessions and structure existing collections for comprehensibility. These information organization tools will facilitate the work of Archives staff while making the Legislative Collection more accessible and user-friendly for researchers and the general public alike.

In collaboration with the Hillsboro Public Library, the information problem is how to craft an extension of the current non-traditional collection – the “Library of Things” – into one of the few tool lending libraries affiliated with a public library affiliated. To solve this problem, I assisted from research on waiver verbiage to targeted marketing and strategic planning. I have been on the ground floor of a new community resource, a part of the origin story of a burgeoning force in public libraries, a pivotal opportunity to provide an innovative, yet essential service. The “Library of Things” is a service model expanding libraries’ lending capabilities beyond books. Public libraries embrace and exemplify this emerging feature of the “sharing economy”. Talk of the sharing economy tends to revolve around flashy startups which disrupt markets. Yet public libraries were sharing before it was cool: lending materials to people who, in some sense, collectively own them yet may not otherwise be able to afford them. The sharing service model evokes a sense of community, resonates with cultivating genuine connections and lasting engagement.

The Wilhelm Hester Photography Collection is a vital resource for both maritime and local historians, as well as a valuable asset to UW Special Collections. Unfortunately, as is frequently the case in large academic institutions, time constraints and financial pressures mean that the initial processing was basic, resulting in a poor-quality finding aid and inadequate document housing. Improper housing placed the photographs at risk from acidification and mechanical damage, whilst the inadequate finding aid dramatically reduced their accessibility. Our sponsor decided to completely restructure the collection and asked our team for help. We laid the foundation for this project by rehousing over 300 photographs and revamping the online description with enhanced metadata for a more intuitive user experience. Our work will transform the user’s first point of contact f into a gateway for collection discovery, enhancing its usability and maximizing our university’s contribution to research.