Our project is helping the Idaho Commission for Libraries (ICFL) modernize their existing free training resource: Alternative Basic Library Education (ABLE). While a successful program, it needs significant revision, consolidation, and updating to continue being a relevant LIS resource. We are supplying ICFL with the following documents to aid them: comprehensive content audit, user personas, and taxonomy terms/concepts to guide future content creation. The goal is to help ICFL continue providing free quality, versatile LIS resources while increasing the reach of the program to the underserved and the underrepresented in the field of library and information sciences.

Currently entrepreneurs in the maritime industry are facing the problem of finding funding opportunities efficiently with disparate messy online resources with high charges. Our Blue Funder Portal provides one central location for maritime innovators to find and search for a wide range of funding opportunities sponsored by the Washington State Department of Commerce. These entrepreneurial projects flourish and further help to grow the “blue” business in the pacific northwest maritime industry.

Dr. Ann Huppert and Dr. Pamela O. Long are developing a history of the Church of the Gesù, the first Jesuit church built in Rome. I implemented data organization, performed data entry, and created a Table of Contents for the 16th-century account book. The TOC tracks peoples involved, monetary transactions, materials, and other details relevant to construction that occurred between 1568 and 1581, and establishes a relationship between folio photographs and corresponding pages of the transcription. My work complements the researchers’ architectural and historical expertise, giving them a clearer picture of the construction project and facilitating the capture of data.

“Collections as data” (CaD) goes beyond traditional archival practices to analyze cultural heritage collections that support computationally-driven research. We analyzed George Mason University’s (GMU) Special Collections Resource Center’s (SCRC) procedures and metadata, drafted a report for the SCRC, and presented our findings. The team liaised between the SCRC and GMU’s Digital Scholarship Center (DiSC), a stakeholder in CaD initiatives and digital scholarship. This project modified SCRC’s workflows, procedures, and standards, improving accessibility to data-driven digital scholarship. The emerging strategic partnership between the SCRC and DiSC will provide researchers with new opportunities to interact with special collections materials.

The Northwest Annual was a yearly exhibition of painting and sculpture by Pacific Northwest artists, hosted by the Seattle Art Museum from 1914 to 1977, and served as a significant cultural event for regional artists. In order to properly manage and promote archival materials about the NWA, a new digital exhibition was created for SAM. This involved digitizing the original checklists, creating descriptive metadata, using OCR to improve search, restoring photographic material, and interviewing local NW art experts. This digital exhibition will now enable online access to these materials, providing rich information for researchers interested in 20th century Northwest art.

This project contributes to the Seattle Art Museum (SAM)’s Historical Media Collection, preserving materials stored in outdated formats. Due to limited resources, the Seattle Asian Art Museum (SAAM) lacks a digital preservation plan. A donation of 1,000+ slides, taken to document John Grimes’ cultural tour around Japan from 1987-88 and offering a rare glimpse at the ceremonies, architecture, and exhibits he observed, has remained unprocessed and inaccessible. To preserve and provide access to them, this project involved arranging and describing all 1,000+ slides, digitizing 200+ slides from over 20 geographical locations, and creating an Omeka exhibit for SAM’s Digital Collections.

With the evolution of technology and social media, humans as the social creatures we are, have grown in connectivity. The sheer average number of relationships an individual can maintain is at an all-time high! Unfortunately, this sometimes dilutes our special relationships, the relationships that we cannot live without. That is where GroupConnect comes in. GroupConnect is a private, invite-only social media platform where users can share their memories with their families and groups of close friends. GroupConnect allows families and friends to stay connected no matter where the journey of life takes you, from infancy to adulthood.

As Starbucks increases its drink lineup, with currently over 90 beverages, beverage recipe cards have become increasingly important learning and reference materials. We worked with Starbucks stakeholders and baristas to explore how beverage recipe cards are used across physical and digital platforms. We created information architecture and standardization recommendations, metadata, content models, and dictionaries to steer recipe card sharing and development. By standardizing the content and organization of recipe cards, we improve the barista learning experience and move towards making beverage recipe and preparation information interoperable data resources to empower other business activities, such as supply ordering and efficiency studies.

The Data Refuge Data Catalog archives federal climate and environmental data. It provides historical snapshots of datasets released on government data portals, which are vulnerable to deletion. Yet the metadata associated with these Data Refuge records have been minimal, and their relationship with the source records have not been clearly defined. To address this, we investigated crosswalking solutions, improved metadata of target datasets, customized an extensible schema, standardized tagging with controlled vocabulary, and documented workflow for future-phase implementation. The results improve trustworthiness and interoperability, facilitate more seamless data discovery and retrieval, and meet the needs of both archivists and researchers.

Aurora Picture Show is a media arts center in Houston, TX. Since its founding in 1998, they’ve presented a variety of noncommercial film and performance art, as well as various educational initiatives. Their documentation have been a mess for years, making it difficult for staff to find information about past presentations. After determining what would best meet Aurora’s needs while staying within budget, we created an updated database. Not only does this database make it easier for staff to do their jobs, the use of subject keywords provides a broad overview of the many topics that appear in Aurora’s presentations.