Working with the New Hospitality Institute and building upon research from the H.E.A.R.D. Collective, this capstone builds an online space for hospitality workers and interested academics to contribute research around this industry not often studied with a data-driven sociological lens. This online space first acts as an archive of public policy created or activated by the pandemic relevant to hospitality workers in the United States, and will hopefully develop into portal to deal with a variety of labor concerns in the service industry.

Pregnant people are overwhelmed by the vast plethora of information about birth and postpartum while simultaneously feeling lost and without agency. Using NNLM, PubMed, and MedlinePlus, we conducted research on their information-seeking behavior and created a library toolkit for public librarians to create materials for their patrons about maternal health. Our resulting toolkit includes handouts, social media tools, inclusive vocabulary, and bookmarks that are ready-to-go or customizable. Our project makes a difference because the published toolkit on NNLM’s website will increase health literacy and empower library patrons in local communities to be an informed participant in their health decisions.

Utilization of library resources is instrumental towards academic success; however, library anxiety can inhibit student’s ability to access library’s resources. The present study investigates how book clubs influence library anxiety. Five librarians were interviewed about their experiences with book clubs. Patterns emerged indicating book clubs offering holistic student support, focusing on building relationships, and addressing different levels of anxiety saw decreases in library anxiety. Suggestions for best practices in designing and running book clubs to decrease library anxiety are provided. Reduction in library anxiety helps increase a student’s ability to use library resources and can thereby increase their academic success.

This capstone presentation provides a high-level summary of Corey Cherrington's work building a digital archive for the Celtic Arts Foundation in Mount Vernon, WA. To complete this goal, I have created an archive for the Celtic Arts Foundation’s historical materials (physical and born-digital) and enacted a long-term plan to stabilize the records involved in this archiving project. Key areas of focus are: Digital Preservation, Digital Asset Management, Information Architecture, and user experience design.

To fix the broken relationship between the Base Library and middle school students, Liz Gershon used the lessons learned in her courses and a 3D printer to build community. She began with laying the foundation by learning the students' names, showing them movies, and modeling positive interactions for other staff. To build on that goodwill, Liz created a collaborative class for the students to learn TinkerCad and print those creations on the 3D printer.

From the 1960s to 1990s, Plattsburgh had a vibrant culture of concerts and performances, playing host to rock groups and to speakers that were touring the Northeastern US and Quebec. Many influential artists visited the local SUNY Plattsburgh campus. For my Capstone project I focused on a period of time (1980s and 1990s) and interviewed five former students and local Plattsburgh residents. We talked about their experiences at these events and more broadly about their lives living in this town. I am creating an online exhibit showcasing these interviews and the events that the alumni reminisced about.

This project entailed item-level cataloging of rare 78rpm shellac discs from the Offenbacher Mozart Collection at the UW Music Library, with a focus on materials recorded before 1923, which entered the public domain in 2022. After complete and accurate bibliographic records had been created, additional research and data remediation allowed a previously unidentified set of audio files to be associated with metadata and uploaded to the Internet Archive. Cataloging physical and digital elements from this unique research collection has created an unprecedented level of access to rare sound recordings from the early 20th century.

The Center for an Informed Public (CIP) has an enormous volume of data that has been collected for over a decade. This data spans hundreds of targeted and ongoing crisis events and has been sampled and archived in various ways. This capstone's objective is to make the CIP's research sharable, reproducible, and accessible. The result of this capstone is a web-based library with test datasets and documentation on how the CIP can start the process of creating their data library. The data library will help establish the CIP as a leading organization for social media-based research on misinformation and disinformation.

Drawing upon several philosophical theories and experiential pedagogies, I've designed a gamified learning device to assist learners in developing their research skills so that they will be better equipped with the literacies to navigate our complicated mediasphere in their personal, academic and professional lives. This device’s collection echoes the random assortments found in the historical variations of curiosity cabinets. Learners will manually inspect and speculate about the cabinet’s mysterious and unusual objects and then will utilize library resources to investigate their actual origins or functions. This learning program is repeatable and adaptable for many types of learners.