Descriptive standards used to develop archival descriptions—also called finding aids—are well-suited to describe the fundamental documentary elements of collections of analog materials; it becomes necessary to assess these standards’ applicability for born-digital materials, which are being ingested into repositories with increasing frequency. After writing archival descriptions of a born-digital collection which is to be accessioned by UW’s Special Collections, I have evaluated where these standards do not address the fundamental documentary elements of born-digital materials. I have also developed a set of recommended adaptations to these standards, so that they can adequately convey relevant information about born-digital materials.

For my project I have designed a ten week, graduate level course in descriptive bibliography. Descriptive bibliography is the art of describing books in the hand press period of printing. The course will provide exposure and hands-on experience to the basics of bibliographic description. The course focuses on the five main components in descriptive bibliography; format, collation formula, statement of signing, number of leaves, and pagination statement. The goal of this project is to showcase bibliographic description and the need for courses in the field.

Our research found an information gap on research concerning how librarians serve teens with disabilities in libraries. To address this issue, we developed and produced a live recording of a WLA CAYAS sponsored webinar that promoted our best practices to help librarians serve teens with disabilities. Our Webinar helped librarians learn how to more effectively serve teens with a wide range of disabilities in public and school libraries. We covered best practices for interacting with this population, how to help them access relevant information, programming ideas, how to build accessible and inclusive spaces, and discussed funding opportunities.

Women, POC, and LGBTQIA+ individuals are critically underrepresented in video game protagonists, while straight, White male protagonists dominate the medium. This inequality not only alienates players, but also makes marginalized individuals less likely to pursue game development as a career. By conducting a historical overview of the customizability, species, gender, complexion, race, age, and sexual orientation of video game protagonists, we aim to quantify this inequality to establish the need for change on the part of developers. The goal of this research is to effect positive change in representation and inclusivity both on-screen and behind the scenes.

Little Seedlings Bilingual Preschool is a new preschool in the Renton, WA, and has no budget to establish a Vietnamese and English library for their preschool students. The Director hopes to expand their small library with not only Vietnamese and English books, but also collect read-along books to stimulate their students’ literacy skills and boost independent reading. Through this project, iSchool Student Charlene developed a Collection Development Policy for the library, fund-raised $275 for the Listen Center, cataloged and weeded 400+ books using LibraryThing, and organized the library space for better access and browsing for students.

College students face a wide range of stressful situations that can be difficult to navigate alone. Our web app, Drifting, provides guided exercises— for processing difficult emotions or providing encouragement— and a forum to see other’s thoughts for similar situations. Inspired by the concept of the message in the bottle, where people can anonymously release their secrets to the sea, we offer a safe place for students to confide in their troubles, to support each other, and to promote healthier mental wellbeing.

Personal projects are the culmination of our intrinsic goals and desires but starting, working and completing them is difficult - we push them aside due to the lack of deadlines and consequences. Earlybird bridges the gap between intention and action by encouraging users to commit five minutes of work on their personal projects at a time and rewarding each commitment and additional time spent working on their project. The gamified experience coupled with mindfulness techniques to overcome procrastination barriers offers a unique solution that will help our users cultivate a habit of realizing their latest aspirations.

Autism spectrum disorder is a difficult condition to diagnose, due to the lack of conclusive medical test. My team in Seattle Children's develop a game designed to measure children’s executive function (EF) score, which is fitted into a machine learning model to accurately diagnose autism. I created a secure channel to transfer the EF data from client’s devices to the Seattle Children’s in compliance to HIPAA. I also researched and implemented various rewards mechanics designed to make these games as appealing to children as possible. This project will serve as an improvement in the way ASD is diagnosed.

Have you ever thought about what happened behind the scenes when you search databases on your library’s online catalog? Exlibris, a ProQuest Company manages about more than 15,000 titles of databases and provide libraries with title metadata. The company recently developed a new back-end tool which aims to better serve its clients. The goal of our project is to develop an efficient data migration strategy and migrate metadata from the old tool into the new one. Since the library’s online catalog are becoming an integral part of our professional life, we are hoping to make it more convenient for everyone.

Project Premonition aims to detect pathogens before they cause outbreaks by turning mosquitoes into devices that collect data from animals in the environment. First, mosquitoes are collected using robots. Then, each metagenome sample goes through DNA sequencing. Finally, we use metagenome alignment to identify what pathogens exist in each sample. For my capstone project, I optimized this metagenome alignment step by using data science to reduce redundancy and contamination in our reference genome database. This data is both large and complex, containing over 600,000 genomes and 1.4 Tbp (tera base pairs).