Capstone Projects | Information School | University of Washington

Enhancing Toolkits for Online Medical Library

HEALWA is an online medical library for healthcare professionals hosted by the UW Health Sciences Library via a contract with the Washington State Department of Health. HEALWA sponsored this capstone project with the goal to increase visibility and accessibility of its resources to better serve the information needs of its users. The project encompassed the curation of eBooks for 12 of its existing professional toolkits, creation of 3 new interdisciplinary toolkits, and drafting of 4 blog articles on the online library's news page. The enhanced and newly created toolkits have the potential to facilitate research for Washington State's healthcare professionals.

Evaluating Potential Functionality of a Keyword Taxonomy

IHME has identified the need to evaluate if their keyword taxonomy functionality could be enhanced to improve search experience for public users of their data catalog. The results of this evaluation are a deeper understanding of the keyword taxonomy’s current functionality, how it compares to similar data catalogs, and where valuable changes would enhance current functionality. The results will improve user experience for not only public users, but internal users as well. These changes will also support more efficient internal processes and place IHME in a solid position to grow the functionality of their keyword taxonomy over time.

Everything Goes, TradeUW: Buy and Sell Clothes with Fellow Huskies

TradeUW is an online shopping platform that allows University of Washington students to buy and sell secondhand clothing items while aiming to reduce waste, cost, risk of scams, and promote a safe shopping experience. These are just a few of the key information problems present in the fast fashion industry that people actively partake in. As a result with TradeUW, college students are better able to shop both efficiently and effectively while accounting for both the negative environmental and personal complications that come with clothing shopping. Our project impacts the lives of others by encouraging and promoting fashion sustainability.

Everything, Everyqueer, All At Once (in Atlanta)

We hoped to research LGBTQIA+ archives in Atlanta, Georgia. While there are many queer archives listed in Atlanta, it is actually difficult to access them. Aside from a local public library known for its efforts to reach out to LGBTQIA+ Atlantans, it’s complicated to find material for queer Southerners outside of bookstores. By identifying LGBTQIA+ archives in Atlanta, other queer Southerners should be able to locate and use these archives. Also, others will be able to take the foundation of this project and seek out queer archives in other areas of the country.

Extra Lives for a Resource

Don’t Die is a repository of interviews about video games, specifically: -the plight of marginalized voices in the video game industry/culture. -the neglected legacies of systems online that are preventing us from getting along. -the patterns of indifference in media and culture that diminish coverage of labor issues in entertainment industries. Founder David Wolinsky proposed a multi-year project to grow his website into a fully realized resource. Our project focused on the initial development of metadata and taxonomies, as well as making suggestions for future work to set the website up to exist and achieve its long term purpose.

FAE (“For Anything Esports”): A Curated Platform for Esports Freelancers and Organizations

Freelancers face numerous challenges regarding being easily recruited for work opportunities within the rapidly growing and competitive esports industry. FAE (“For Anything Esports”) is an all-in-one resource that highlights esports freelancers by giving them a dedicated platform to showcase their expertise, experience, and availability. FAE also caters to esports organizations by providing a directory consisting of unique freelancing roles for candidates to be easily identifiable and recruited for opportunities. By providing our platform to both freelancers and organizations, we are minimizing the issues that are commonly found in the esports industry, such as unfair compensation and lack of marketability.

File Management for Artists and Creatives

The guide created for this capstone project aims to educate artists and creatives on the importance of file management while providing a guide for implementation. The survey sent out to artist communities found that artists (1) have a limited understanding of information organization, (2) do not follow an organization system, and (3) feel that information organization is essential. These results inspired the creation of a how-to guide for artists to follow and implement into their creative profession. The guide educates on various information organization topics specific to art and creative use with modeled examples.

Fostering Cultural Competencies in LIS education with Service Learning and Participatory Design

Researchers have made the case that adopting practical applications of cultural competence in LIS education is crucial for supporting marginalized communities. This project suggests an approach to this application: LIS education programs can implement service learning courses in partnership with organizations that support houseless communities. Through research and interviews, a process was created in which LIS programs and partners use Participatory Design and Asset-Based Community Development techniques to sustain the course. It can be further sustained by establishing a dedicated research group to nurture the partnership and publish results.

Game, Set, Match: Repository Development for Student Research

This project addressed the challenge of organizing and providing searchability for previously inaccessible student projects from eight years of the LIS 536 Metadata for Interactive Media course, which builds on the work of the UW GAME Research Group. With the goal of collocating projects on a broad level for high recall, we built a controlled vocabulary for tagging projects. Then, we set up the repository on Open Science Framework and created governance and usage documents. This repository and searching system improves students' and researchers' ability to explore completed projects so that they can utilize and build upon that work.

GardenSpace: Bridging the Information Gap for BIPOC Urban Gardeners in Seattle

Urban gardening involves cultivating plants in an urban environment like a community garden. In Seattle, BIPOC urban gardeners have historically encountered an information gap that has excluded them from predominantly white gardening spaces. To address this, GardenSpace provides one of the first-ever centralized digital spaces to access resources and connections within the urban gardening community in Seattle. Through our platform, these urban gardeners can explore events, engage with organizations, and learn about diverse community gardens in the metropolitan. By facilitating their integration into the broader BIPOC urban gardening community, GardenSpace fosters inclusivity and unity within Seattle's urban gardening sphere.

iSchool Capstone

2023