iSchool Capstone

2017

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Cataloging a Video Game Collection

I tested the UW GAMER Group's Video Game Metadata Schema against the Living Computers: Museum + Labs collection of 2,162 video games and cataloged over 1,000 of the games in the collection. I created a metadata crosswalk from the VGMS to MARC21 and compared and improved the controlled vocabularies of both groups. I cataloged games and supervised Museology interns as they assisted in the cataloging process, met with librarians at Michigan State University to discuss standardizing video game cataloging practices, and wrote and submitted a paper for publication about the process and my findings.
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Cataloging at the Arsenal: Establishing a research library at the Washington National Guard Museum

Over the years, the Washington National Guard Museum has accepted donations amounting to several hundred books. These books were un-inventoried and taking up space in various storage areas. The Museum Board envisioned a Research Library to provide access to these books, but did not have the resources, or expertise to put that library together. Our team was able to catalog a large portion of the books, weed out items outside the scope of the library, and set up collection development and cataloging policies and procedures - giving the Museum tools to establish a Research Library and continue to manage the collection.
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Center on Contemporary Art Archives Digitization

Our Capstone team processed, prepared for accession, and digitized much of CoCA’s remaining and untouched video-audio content. For months, we worked to inventory, catalogue, and preserve digitized content according to CoCA’s finding aid resources and future needs. This content will be preserved internally on CoCA’s private server/cloud storage system. In troubleshooting such uncharted territory, our team researched digital preservation and future best practices for ongoing digitization work. This directly impacted our final written assessment and review on our work, in which we highlighted future suggestions for digital storage/best practices, and digital preservation frameworks for future iSchool CoCA interns.
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Children Will Listen: The Value of Children's Literature

Using the Historical Children’s Literature Collection at the University of Washington, Special Collections, we aim to shed light on how much can be gleaned from the study of children’s literature of the past. With this project, we have created an online exhibit with teaching tools and research guides to garner more public engagement with this collection. Our goal is to provide access to these items in order to inspire studies, share with others, and encourage future use of UW Special Collections materials.
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Children’s Early Chapter Book Reclassification

The Freeport Community Library has over 8,000 children’s books and finding age appropriate books at the correct reading level is hard for children and their caregivers. To solve this problem, a new shelving location was created for early chapter books. Early chapter books were moved to a new shelving location, provided new call numbers and spine labels, leveled using Fountas & Pinnell, and marked with identifying stickers to signify them early chapter books. By creating a separate section for early chapter books, children and caregivers are now able to find early chapter books at the right reading level.
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Cicero

Busy students and professionals spend too much time rereading material to study or learn. While notes help with studying faster — few people have the time to write notes for everything. This results in inefficient review of materials, the loss of precious time, and losing crucial information by skimming content. Enter Cicero, a cutting edge web service that leverages advanced technologies to auto-generate notes for individuals with heavy readings. With Cicero, users will be able to save time by generating customizable summarized notes of study material they have already read before.
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CoCA Archives Wiki Project

The Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA) Seattle Archives Wiki Project, upon culmination, will be a go-to page for those who are interested in learning more about CoCA. It will also give the Center a new way to reconnect with past artists and presenters, curators, and audiences, both general and within the arts community, “to tell the whole CoCA story”. Although the CoCA gallery is several contemporary art museums/galleries, this project will still be a great way to allow Seattle residents, visitors, and those who are located elsewhere to get a glimpse of another aspect of the history and spirit of the Seattle contemporary art scene.
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CoCA Slide Project Presents: The 1982-1989 Slide Enterprise!

My capstone focused on beginning the preparation of CoCA’s slide collection for digitization as part of an ongoing effort to preserve CoCA’s history through their digital archives project. The slides contain images of exhibitions, artists, performances, forums and other events related to CoCA’s shows. Since CoCA has a large slide collection, the project focused on slides spanning the years 1982 – 1989. Over 1500 slides were viewed and organized into binders according to exhibition, total number of slides, duplicates and number of sheets in each section. The project also included creating an excel spreadsheet connecting the work with CoCA’s archival finding aid.
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Constructing the Mental Models of Webrecorder Users

Webrecorder is a free, open-access web archiving software that excels at capturing dynamic, born-digital content. Its technology is powerful, but its user base is largely unknown to its creators at the NYC digital arts non-profit Rhizome. For my project, I collected data through a structured survey and a structured email interview as well as semi-structured, in-depth interviews with select volunteers. I coded these data to prepare them for qualitative analysis, which I will do after graduation. From this analysis, I will create a roadmap of recommendations for the Webrecorder team and points to touch on when writing their user documentation.
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CoSphaera

CoSphaera is an online language community that connects college language professors nationally in an effort to break down the anxieties associated with learning a new language. Learning a second language is as important now as ever; however, in today’s universities students struggle to practice their conversational skills due to the anxiety of this social interaction and fear of making mistakes in front of their peers. CoSphaera will allow language professors to connect with compatible classrooms in the US, in an effort to provide students with a “revolving-door” experience to conversational language practice, thereby connecting classrooms and breaking down these social anxieties. Nerds R Us | Halle Friedland, Chris Leatham, Adam Sebetich, & Heng Yon | INFO