Scarecrow Video is a nonprofit video store and archive that houses over 145,000 titles. Scarecrow has been growing its collection for over 30 years, across various catalog system conversions, resulting in many inconsistencies and gaps in the catalog’s metadata. For our capstone project, we were responsible for checking and correcting metadata within the Sci-Fi and Japanese Horror genres. Ultimately, we verified metadata for over 600 titles. This updated metadata will increase the usability and searchability of Scarecrow’s catalog, and assist the transition into Scarecrow’s new web-based system that will be launched in the next few months.

This project sought to support the work of the librarians at Lakeside School Upper School, a private high school in Seattle, WA. The librarians needed to find a solution to a decrease in time available to devote to direct instruction pertaining the use of the many databases that the library purchases for access by its students. The Capstone team, in order to help solve this problem, created 31 video-based user guides on how to use 11 different databases, as well as videos devoted to general database use instruction (i.e. search strategies, keywords, etc.).

Last year, SGS, a private, nonprofit middle school, moved into its permanent home, along with a collection of 2,000 books and no library staff. The library presented many challenges, namely an uncataloged fiction collection, a nonexistent circulation system, and an overwhelming lack of student engagement. Together with my sponsor and four students, I developed the Student Librarianship Program, cataloged 775 fiction books, established a check out process, and celebrated our progress with the entire school. SGS’s community of 170 students and staff now have a library they can use and a renewed sense of excitement about its continued evolution.

Working with the Whitman County Historical Society to help them discover what specific surplus materials they have in storage, I inventoried over five hundred individual items while creating a directory of potential new homes for those materials that fell out of the Society’s scope and flagging those that might be considered for integration into their collection. In conjunction with an interactive PowerPoint presentation, this project allows the Society to easily find and access these materials, with the end-goal of opening up storage space and moving on surplus materials to organizations that will recognize and utilize their full informational potential.

Verletta Kern and Beth Lytle collaborate to maintain the UW Libraries virtual space, Open Scholarship Commons. To expand this space into a more collaborative online platform, we conducted a needs assessment by interviewing other institutions with similar online platforms, as well as UW faculty. Through qualitative analysis, we determined recommendations and best practices for building an online digital scholarship commons that our sponsors can use to strategically develop an interdisciplinary online community at UW. This project supports the increase of interdisciplinary collaboration across UW.

The King County Library System genealogical collections have never been evaluated for their efficacy. This project surveyed the state of the genealogical collections through cataloging of collection material, interviewing the target audience and peers, and analyzing how it serves the community. While there was a range of practices from peer libraries, the target audience showed satisfaction with the current state of the KCLS collections and their accessibility, and current practices were evaluated to be effective with the available labor. With the gathered information, KCLS is better equipped to understand patron needs for this particular collection.

Building upon the work of a previous project, we have expanded and enhanced the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines for application to the Svoboda Diaries. The Project had an initial set of guidelines but were seeking a more robust model for representing the intricacies of the diaries. In this project, we developed a Svoboda specific schema, established a method of encoding the margin notes, and provided training materials to ensure the sustainability of this initiative. These resources bring the Svoboda Diaries Project one step closer to digitally representing the diaries in their collection and making them more accessible to researchers.

Swedish Medical Center had a collection of materials documenting their history that they were unable to adequately preserve. I worked with Jay Augsburger, their Medical Historian, to fand an organization that could hold and preserve those materials and to prepare them for transfer, as well as to use their information to prepare historical documents for SMC's staff and the public. This ensures that a key part of Seattle's medical history will remain preserved and available to those who need it.

We partnered with the Washington Center for the Book and the Washington State Library to promote zine culture, literacy, and community, and the annual Washington State Zine Competition. To address these needs, our team created, marketed, and hosted a zine workshop; assembled zine making kits; and used feedback from attendees, sponsors, and testers to improve our materials. We shared information and submission guidelines for the competition, and encouraged participation by our fellow MLIS students and community members. The zine kit materials we’ve prepared will be circulated to libraries around the state to host their own zine-making workshops.

Acción Latina, a largely volunteer-run community organization based in San Francisco’s Mission District, has been publishing a twice-monthly, bilingual newspaper since 1970 and producing an annual festival celebrating Latin American music since 1982. In 2017, the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley acquired the Acción Latina pictorial archive. For my capstone, I processed and arranged the nearly 10,000 photographic prints and over 600 posters in the archive, and wrote a detailed, searchable finding aid that is now published on the Online Archive of California.