I am proud of my service to so many diverse library communities in the Seattle area. Each of them has focused on my interests in providing access and service in different ways. The three service projects that have had the most significant effect on how I perceive these professional goals are my two directed fieldwork experiences and my independent study project.

I have had the opportunity to participate in two directed fieldwork experiences during my time at the iSchool: cataloging materials at Cornish College of the Arts and working on building a new collection of music from the Puget Sound region in the Odegaard Undergraduate Library Media Center. Both of these projects were focused on providing access to new materials. At Cornish, I was able to spend the summer cataloging gift collections that had been donated to the library over the last four years. I was very committed to getting these materials on the shelves. Because the library did not have the staff resources to catalog them, some of these valuable resources had been languishing in the back room, just waiting to be processed for circulation. By the end of my directed fieldwork, more than 200 items had been cataloged, processed, and put on the shelves. Each month, the library sends a bulletin of new materials to faculty and staff. I was thrilled when Hollis Near, the library director, contacted me in the fall to tell me how excited faculty were to see the new sheet music and scripts on the shelves. Working on this project was also the first time that I began to consider how service is achieved through our online integrated library systems. My experience cataloging and studying knowledge organization has made a lasting impact on how I think these tools can support access and service in both an on-line and reference environment.

 Puget Sounds: Documenting Music Close to Home is a project funded by the Friends of the University of Washington Libraries to begin a regional music collection at the Odegaard Media Center. During my directed fieldwork, my main duties involved drafting the collection development policy, selecting music for the collection, and helping to build a web presence for the collection. I selected music from over 150 musicians who are an integral part of the musical framework from Olympia to Bellingham, Washington. Kara Wiggert and I each worked on building the web presence: I focused on providing methods for community members to provide feedback, getting the collection development policy online, and creating a MySpace presence to engage the public. The project is ongoing, and the web site continues to be in development as other students work to build the projects presence on the web and in the community. Curating the collection and then putting together the public presence also challenged me to think about the best ways to provide service and access to this collection. I think our solution of informative web pages, avenues for public feedback, and the more direct connection through MySpace are a unique synthesis of tools to achieve these goals.

Lastly, the digital library that I have created for the Ethnomusicology Archives will ultimately make approximately 1,000 commercial recordings from around the globe accessible online. While my formal presentation in the project - developing the metadata and customizing the library - are complete, the project continues to grow. When the 78 rpm collection is fully cataloged, it will increase the visibility of the archives and access to archives material. Read more about the details of the digital library project.

All of these projects challenged my conceptions of service. Coming from a non-profit background, I still tend to think of service in terms of charitable giving of some kind (whether it happens to be time or dollars). But each of these experiences made me realize that service can also be working to further the goals and ideals of your profession. As a result, I have really begun to think about how as professionals we serve our user communities and what customer service means. I am committed to public service and in my career I want to work towards bridging the ideas of customer service provided through interpersonal interactions and customer service provided through well-designed, accessible systems.