Practical/Service Experience

In addition to gaining knowledge in class, it was essential for me to seek practical, professional-level experiences so that I would be ready to serve as a librarian after school was done.  I found that seeking out different kinds of experiences also helped me gain a better understanding of the kinds of librarianship that are most interesting to me.

Directed Fieldwork at Seattle Art Museum Library

SAM Special Collections Before

During my second year at the i-School, I had the opportunity to complete a cataloging DFW

SAM Special Collections After

at the Seattle Art Museum.  I have always loved working with rare books, manuscripts and other miscellaneous materials.  To me, accurately representing these objects in a  way that makes them accessible is a real challenge and a real joy.

At the art museum, I conducted original cataloging on a collection of several hundred rare art books that comprised the library’s special collections.  The collection included oversized folios commemorating an archeological dig, 150 year-old auction catalogs and manuscripts culled together from artists’ original works.

Under the direction of librarian Traci Timmons, I worked through the collection piece by piece.  In some cases, brief bibliographic records had already been created but needed subject headings and classification.  In other cases, no cataloging had been done.  In these cases, I either created the record from scratch or obtained one from OCLC.  I found the original cataloging to particularly challenging,  particularly when dealing with manuscripts or extremely rare books where I had no existing record to work with.  Many of the books in this collection were real treasures.

This is a picture of one of my favorite volumes, a book depicting ceremonial dress from Central America. Each image was carefully rendered in tempura paint, and the bold colors made the book truly artful:

Costume Book from SAM

Scrapbook Cataloging at UW Special Collections

In addition to my DFW, I was able to volunteer at Suzzallo Library’s Special Collections Department for two quarters in 2008-2009.  I worked with manuscript cataloger Helice Koffler to provide access and description to a collection of dusty scrapbooks, some of which had been sitting unrepresented on basement shelves for over 50 years.  The scrapbooks came from many accessions and spanned a wide variety of subject matter–everything from early Seattle politics to vaudeville to architecture.

The first step of this project involved cleaning up brief records that had been generated automatically from an EAD conversion.  In this step, I checked all names against the Library of Congress authority database and made sure that titles conformed with the standards set out by AACR2 and DACS.  At this point, I also measured the scrapbooks so that they could be housed in archival boxes.  I also recorded each item’s physical extent in the bibliographic records.  After cleaning up the brief records, I worked with Helice to choose a selection of scrapbooks that could benefit the most from being fully cataloged.  We chose scrapbooks that had some kind of historical or aesthetic significance, books that researchers may wish to access as primary documents and were currently not getting much use.

This is where the project became really interesting.  In archival manuscript cataloging, information about an item’s creator, its contents, as well as its provenance, are all incredibly important.  In fact,  from these descriptions, subject headings and other access points are generated.  A great portion of this phase involved carefully poring over the selected volumes for clues about the where the item came from and what purpose it served.  As I examined each item, I fleshed out the corresponding MARC record, adding descriptive fields (the 520 and 545 were particularly important), access points and call numbers.

At the time of writing, this project is still underway and will be for some time.  Right now, I’m fitting each scrapbook inside of its archival box and taking care of some outstanding preservation issues.  I also plan on exhibiting some of the more interesting scrapbooks in Suzzallo library sometime this spring.

Mahrya and Edna in Special Collections

ACLU-Washington

In addition to traditional cataloging, I’ve developed a professional interest in web taxonomy and website usability. In June of 2008, the webmasters for ACLU-Washington put out a call for volunteers to advise them on the taxonomy of their website.  The ACLU was planning on completely revamping their website.  They knew that the current structure was problematic, but they were having difficulties thinking of ways to make the site more navigable.  At that point in my education, I was interested in learning more about web taxonomy.  I decided to step up professionally to help an organization that I supported and improve the site’s taxonomy in the process.

In order to offer useful advice, I needed to seriously bone up on the main issues surrounding user experience, usability testing and web taxonomy.   First, I completed a careful review of the website’s current structure, and noticed several instances of polyhierarchy and ambiguous menu choices that could be improved.  Then, I drafted a wireframe for a structure that I thought would potentially make more sense for end users.  After researching the issue of usability, I concluded that it would be a good idea to bring users into the design as soon as possible.  I determined that a mode of testing called card sorting would be well-suited for the ACLU’s project.  Armed with my research and analysis, I met with the ACLU and presented my findings.  We talked for several hours, discussing various wireframes and testing options.  I think that we all walked away from the meeting feeling that a lot had been accomplished.  The webmasters were armed with new techniques for improving their site, and I had consulted as an information professional.

ACLU-WA website after re-design