High school students who come from underprivileged backgrounds have difficulty navigating the resources required to pursue higher education. Our solution helps students in the South Seattle area towards finding resources that are tailored to what they need for their own circumstance. From navigating the college process as a first-generation student, to learning more about the scholarships available for undocumented students—our website helps underprivileged students gain the knowledge and power to take action. We come from similar backgrounds as the students we want to help, our project aims to empower those students to take action towards high education. You’re not alone!

Literary Labyrinth addresses the need among beginning graduate students and advanced undergraduates in English for an introduction to conducting research in language and literature. The website gathers many of the most invaluable resources available to researchers in these disciplines and presents example research questions illustrating when and how to use such materials. While traditional library guides simply collect, organize, and display resources used in a discipline, Literary Labyrinth offers tutorials emphasizing strategy and process. The guide demonstrates how scholars can thoughtfully approach research by first deconstructing their query and then surveying the bibliographic landscape to chart a path toward answers.

This project involved cataloging a 10,000-document collection of newly digitized, multilingual Law Library of Congress treaties and international agreements. The collection was classified by metadata elements in a master spreadsheet. To ensure users’ ability to fulfill collocating and finding bibliographic objectives, LCSH and indexer-derived keywords were appended to each record. Inconsistencies between records were resolved using OpenRefine and blog posts containing trend graphs and search tips were constructed to promote the collection. When published online, this content will encourage information literacy by helping the organization’s increasingly networked stakeholders navigate and interact with this content for the first time.

To address the information needs of the UW Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Leadership Team, we developed materials that analyze, assess, and provide training on Scalar, an open-source authoring and publishing platform. Through research and examination, we wrote a literature review that compared Scalar to similar publishing platforms, evaluated its accessibility, and examined its potential as an open digital scholarship platform. Additionally, we crafted learning resources and facilitated an interactive online workshop to assist librarians in identifying and promoting Scalar’s features and use cases for future students, faculty, and the broader research community.

According to the landmark study done by the Center of Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente (1997), Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) that happen in childhood can have lasting negative impacts on a person’s mental and physical well-being. Read-a-Rama is an early-literacy non-profit that works with children who come from diverse backgrounds, and life experiences that include trauma and ACEs. Read-a-Rama: A Trauma-Informed Care Approach involved the creation of five tailored trauma-informed care training modules and a comprehensive resource LibGuide for staff. This project will help staff foster a safe, collaborative, and empowered early-literacy environment through the principles of a trauma-informed care.

Tacoma Community House (TCH) offers a variety of services to the community, including adult English and education classes. Many clients expressed a need for materials to help them learn English and books in their native languages. Our solution was to create a self-sufficient library on site that will grow over time with a focus on bilingual books and multicultural materials. In addition, we created a dashboard with online resources in English and world languages that is available to all TCH clients. Both the physical library and dashboard will allow clients to access resources that will help them meet individual goals.

This project seeks to create a resource for librarians new to selecting in comparative religion and/or religious studies that provides information to empower selectors to collect confidently from day one. It takes the form of a book with chapters on the field and its subdisciplines; avenues to keep abreast of conversations in the field; collection development; collection assessment; and comparative collection development policies. The first three chapters are submitted in completion of the capstone requirement, while the second two represent next steps before submission for publication.

Direct fieldwork at Boise State University (BSU) revealed that academic librarians with liaison responsibilities struggled to incorporate the BSU MakerLab into their instructional sessions. To investigate this further, I conducted unstructured interviews with academic librarians. Interviews revealed several barriers that academic librarians felt regarding the BSU MakerLab. To address these barriers, I developed the BSU MakerLab Toolkit, which is comprised of a literature review, an essay matching makerspaces to the ACRL Framework, downloadable lesson plans and handouts, and examples of how to other academic librarians have incorporated emerging technologies and experiential learning into library instructional sessions.

You learn to call 911 in the event of an emergency, but what comes next? Our project aims to educate the public on how, and when to call 911. This includes getting the caller and the call receiver on the same page. Our solution is the creation of a virtual tool to document emergency incidents consistently. Having a standard incident form allows callers to be aware of what information is required by 911 for fast help. In an emergency, the caller is the real 'first responder', and with proper training you can be the difference between life or death!

Often, librarians create information literacy resources based on what they deem to be essential. We took a different, collaborative approach. Partnering with Highline College and the Puente Cultural Cohort, we produced 14 information literacy videos and infographics tailored to the Puente Cohort’s wants and needs, based on informal interviews, student feedback, and beta tests. Our videos aren’t just about information literacy skills. They are about creating culturally sensitive products that highlight and celebrate Highline’s diverse student body. The items in this toolkit give students and instructors the resources they need for both now and the future.