The data captured in historic ships' logbooks represent one of the world's deepest untapped reservoirs of meteorological, historical, and environmental information. Logbooks from nineteenth-century Arctic exploring vessels, with their meticulous recordings of weather, sea ice extent, and species range, can support climate reanalysis models and provide a biogeographic and historical atlas of the Arctic past. Since 2012, citizen scientists at Old Weather (oldweather.org) have transcribed more than 100,000 scanned logbook pages from historic Arctic ships. In order to make this data discoverable and accessible, we built and populated an information structure for Old Weather's data—weather observations, ship positions, daily narratives, and associated manuscripts—and designed a pilot interface for exploration and display. For the first time, both researchers and the public have access to logbook scans, data, transcriptions, links to related materials, and full documentation of sources.

The Book Arts Collection at the UW Libraries Special Collections includes modern artists’ books as well as works on bookbinding, typography, and other historical printing topics. As a non-circulating library, Special Collections must rely on tools such as exhibits to show users the depth and range of their materials. "Artifacts of Loss" is a unique exhibit installed to highlight a selection of meaningful and evocative artists’ books. In addition to the exhibit itself, tangible results of the project include an exhibit catalog, and a comprehensive list of considered works, which will be used by the collection’s curator and catalogers to improve thematic subject headings. The exhibit allows greater visibility of the Book Arts Collection to prospective users. Beyond that, it addresses a universal, yet deeply personal, aspect of life. The feedback we have received has illustrated the incredible impact this exhibit has had on viewers.

Divorce, for children, can have strong emotional and behavioral repercussions, and can cause lasting mental health issues. Therapists work diligently to help families through this, but aren't experts in publishing. This can lead to a reliance on dated materials that may lack depth, currency and accessibility. Armed with an understanding of some of the issues that divorce causes children, Megan and Chelsea worked with therapist Carol Mapp to create an annotated bibliography of high-quality, accessible titles. It addresses issues beyond divorce, including anxiety, grief, moving to a new home and academics. The structure was designed to enhance usability, and is broken down by issue and age range. This project creates a clear, concise resource of supportive texts that can be browsed or searched with ease. This list can be used to guide decisions on materials used in specific bibliotherapy sessions, as a collection development tool, and even shared with clients.

Makerspaces— creative environments dedicated to active learning—are a growing trend in libraries; however, without a contingency plan for sustaining makerspaces, the momentum that libraries have harnessed from the “maker movement” could halt to a standstill. Our research took us to Kitsap County, where nearly 258,000 patrons are served by the regional library system. BiblioTEC (Technology, Education, and Community) is an IMLS award-winning STEM learning lab at Kitsap Regional Library. In order to enable the continued success of BiblioTEC as they enter a new phase of development, we created a Pop-Up Makerspace Toolkit for use in public library learning initiatives. We developed a scalable outcome-based curriculum to provide informal learning for at-risk youth and designed transferable models for library learning labs. Through our work in the community we have helped Kitsap Regional Library strengthen their educational outreach and empower patrons to learn, dream, and make.

In today’s increasingly complex and transparent global environment, the board of directors is required to balance short-term pressures with developing high performing, trustworthy and sustainable organizations. Recruiting directors with the relevant experience and expertise to provide guidance, support and inspiration for the organization is critical to achieving this balance. Korn Ferry Canada is a leadership talent consulting and executive search firm that provides a range of board advisory services including recruiting, assessment and board effectiveness. With offices located across unique and diverse geographies, regional information silos and ad-hoc processes have emerged. This project investigates existing workflows and resources and compares them against the team’s information requirements. The Knowledge Management solution includes recommendations for improving the quality of candidate and client information being accessed, captured, shared and reused for board recruiting. If implemented, the Knowledge Management solution will improve operational efficiency for Korn Ferry Canada’s board practice team.

The Sylvan Way branch, located in Bremerton, Washington, is the largest branch of the Kitsap Regional Library system, and is one of two branches serving the Bremerton area. For this Capstone project, we partnered with KRL to discover untapped patron communities and relationships by analyzing area demographics while utilizing recent assessments of KRL and other library systems. Additionally, we focused on ways to create and strengthen the library’s relationship with the area’s two largest employers, the Department of Defense (comprising of Naval Base Kitsap, Naval Hospital Bremerton, and Puget Sound Naval Shipyard) and Harrison Medical Center. As result of our analysis, the Sylvan Way branch is poised to offer more support in the form of strengthened partnerships and more tailored programs to their existing and new patrons.

As an architecture firm, NBBJ has had Swedish Hospital Medical Center as a long term client since 1936. This has resulted in almost 80 years of architectural records, which have design, legal, technical, intellectual, cultural, and historic value for both the architectural firm and the hospital. NBBJ recently moved their architectural records to a secure off-site location which has opened up space but increases the waiting period for architects who need to access the drawings for current projects. For this project we selected, digitized, and publicized within the firm a selection of architectural drawings related to projects with Swedish Hospital Medical Center. We then created a video to promote the digitized records and documentation for future digitization projects. This project strengthens the working relationship between the hospital and the architecture firm and ensures that the drawings will continue to serve as a means for inspiration for many years to come.

The universe of metadata standards is expansive, diverse, and continuously evolving. My project supported the creation of KAOS (Knowledge-Advancing Organization Systems), an online repository for metadata schemes and schemas of all forms, functions, and levels of complexity - including controlled vocabularies, thesauri, web ontologies, subject lists, classification schemes, indexing languages, descriptive frameworks, conceptual models, and more. After exploratory research into data ingest, storage, migration, transformation, analysis, and visualization, I designed, tested, and implemented a proof-of-concept infrastructure and workflow that lays the foundation for development to begin on a larger scale. When fully launched, the KAOS platform will use linked data to visually represent relationships among metadata standards and show changes in those standards over time. As a centralized access point to the wide world of metadata vocabularies, KAOS serves as a valuable resource for information professionals in any domain or industry.

St. Luke Parish is a Catholic church and school located in Shoreline, Washington. This project focused on organizing the St. Luke Parish library to increase accessibility for parishioners. The parish owned a large number of books, which are now labeled and arranged on the shelves by subject for ease of use and access. I evaluated the checking in/out system and established a system for getting books from the donation stage into the collection, if appropriate. The creation of this library will be a benefit to the parish by providing increased access to helpful books, especially related to issues dealing with the church. The vision is that parishioners will utilize this library often.

Freedom Education Project Puget Sound (FEPPS) is a nonprofit organization that provides college classes leading to an Associate of Arts and Sciences degree at the Washington Corrections Center for Women in Gig Harbor, WA. Classes are taught by faculty from local colleges and universities with the same academic expectations they would have in a typical college setting. Students work hard to meet and exceed these expectations, but they have limited information resources available to support their studies. We have partnered with FEPPS to address this information gap by creating a small academic library for the students inside the prison. Over 1,000 donated books have been gathered, sorted by subject, and entered into a basic inventory catalog. We have established circulation policies and procedures, and have created collection development and maintenance guidelines. Students are already making good use of the library for class assignments and independent learning.