Population projections are estimates of the future population. As part of planning, states and localities across the country develop population projections on a regular basis, but methods and resources differ by area, making quality difficult to evaluate. This State and Local Population Projections Database, stored as part of the Applied Demography Toolbox, brings together state and local population projection information and materials from different sources through survey responses and file sharing. The database can be used by population projection developers and researchers for the study and analysis of population projection methods and associated uncertainty.

Until my capstone, there were no finding aids on the chosen topic: desegregation and busing in Seattle Public Schools. Researchers did not have as much access to this information. Physical materials on this highly requested topic can now be presented to researchers. Hopefully, this finding aid will lead to more transparency and accountability for both helpful and harmful actions committed by the Seattle Public Schools.

This project will develop transcription and captioning procedures for UC Berkeley’s impressive collection of recorded video lectures and interviews given at the campus. Once captioned, these recordings can be streamed as open-access videos on the Berkeley Library servers so that researchers may have access to this rich collection.

The University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections holds several incredible collections of women filmmakers. To bring attention to these collections, I helped create the podcast series Beyond Scope and Content: Hidden Histories in the Film Archives. In addition, I uploaded videos from the collections to the Internet Archive, providing rich metadata for each video to ensure their discovery and descriptive closed captioning to allow for greater accessibility. As a result, anyone listening to Beyond Scope and Content can check out videos referenced in the podcasts and watch the amazing work of these women.

Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center is a biomedical research institution. Arnold Library is the main information hub for the research workforce. Medicine and biomedical research have a dark history of neglecting the needs of certain people, even mistreating or subjecting them to unethical practices to benefit the powerful. White, heterosexual, cis-males were long the primary concern, becoming the “normative” model. Arnold Library rejects that legacy by working to integrate DEI. The library is improving its collections and services, and I collaborated by auditing the book collection for DEI materials and writing a new DEI section in the collection management policy.

Current discussions about ethical use of artificial intelligence for cultural heritage focus on bias, privacy, and surveillance. This paper illustrates how ethics of heritage AI should expand beyond those themes into broader human and environmental exploitation AI causes that put it at odds with efforts toward decolonization. This paper suggests a holistic, interdisciplinary approach that examines the broader effects of AI used for heritage work and focuses on AI that is used for collections and exhibits. It focuses on AI use by heritage organizations such as libraries, museums, and archives, in addition to non-heritage groups participating in heritage work.

The Brigantine Yankee Catalog Project aims to catalog and embed metadata for photographs documenting the sixth sailing voyage of the Brigantine Yankee through the Pacific Islands. The photographs had been digitized but were not cataloged at the Burke Museum, making them inaccessible. By cataloging the photographs, our team was able to increase this collection’s accessibility not only for the museum staff but also, more importantly, for Pacific Islander communities. These communities feature prominently in the images but their identities and cultures were not always documented properly; providing access and inviting input from them will lead to more accurate and respectful representation.

The Geology Library Database was created for students, staff, and volunteers in the UW Burke Museum Geology and Paleontology Department to facilitate library resource discovery. The database was created in FilemakerPro and utilized linked data to allow for easy browsing. It also makes use of its own controlled vocabulary and fully documented schema. As part of its creation, over 250 records were entered to test its capabilities. Once it is fully populated, the database will increase ease of access to materials for the volunteers who do not have the same level of access to UW Libraries as their paid colleagues.

St. Mark’s Cathedral has limited record management and archives. Many important records, documents, and artifacts have been kept in boxes located in storage rooms and employee offices. I assessed Cathedral records and completed an in-depth finding aid on the archive and its contents. The resulting finding aid will provide a framework for future students or other archivists on where the project has left off and possible next steps. St. Mark’s stakeholders will have an accessible, easy-to-navigate aid of what contents are in the archive and the future work needed to complete the archive.

YWCA Alaska wants to preserve and share its rich history with the communities it serves by starting and maintaining an archive. To help the organization plan and prepare to engage volunteers and paid interns in beginning the archives, we have created a framework with archival practices and links to additional resources, and recommended first and future actions. Researching and developing the framework has resulted in a guide YWCA Alaska and other nonprofit organizations can use to start an archive and help the Y's new CEO strengthen her relationships with some of the organization's longest-term supporters.