The following projects were created either through on the job opportunities, or during my time at Kent State for my Master of Library Science degree.
Maker Studio
The Maker Studio is a DIY workshop located inside the Delaware County District Library. I was hired in 2019 to launch and develop this space and since then have grown the space to cover two locations with a total of four staff.
We spend our time weekly teaching patrons how to use the equipment, performing maintenance, purchasing materials, and other various tasks required to keep the space moving along.
The space has continued to grow over the six years we’ve been open and we look forward to later this year when our hours will match the library’s hours for the first time along with new equipment and staff for our users to get to know.
To learn more about the Maker Studio, visit www.delawarelibrary.org/makerstudio.
Lending Board Game Collection
In 2015, I was given a small budget to purchase a collection of hobby board games for the library’s collection. This was a way for me to introduce a bit of my interest and personality to the library and to have a project that gave me a bit more responsibility in my position.
Following our then strategic plan principle to, “Introduce the community to itself,” this was also a way to partner with a local business as we have a hobby shop in our city that sells board games. We partnered with a local game store, Hobby Central, to purchase our games and they have been a helpful and reliable partner in this project.
I handed the project over in 2025, but for the 10 years I managed it, I grew the collection to over 250 board games and over 20 role playing systems. The collection is one of our more popular ones by ratio of items to check outs and has proven to remain a vital part of the library’s collection.
To see the list of games available, go to www.delawarelibrary.org/games.
Otterbein Archives Internship
Kent State University requires the completion of an internship for all of their MLIS candidates. When it came time for me to begin my internship, I met with Otterbein University to determine if they were the environment I was looking for. I was also interested to see if they had a project that fit my desired plans. As it turns out they did, and I accepted the opportunity to do my internship there. What I was looking for was a position digitizing documents to provide access to historical items to a broader online community. Additionally, because most of my work has been in public libraries, gaining experience in an academic library would help me to learn another aspect of librarianship and give me some perspective on possible career paths.
The projects I completed at Otterbein were to correct the transcriptions of the scanned diaries of Lucinda Cornell and to upload them to their Digital Commons. I also took the initiative to seek out scrapbooks to digitize, correct, and upload as well. I was charged with uploading issues of T&C Magazine, a campus magazine, to the Digital Commons and adding the metadata for those as well. A final duty was to evaluate and purchase some materials for the library’s collection, which in my case took the shape of art books to align with a visit from an artist on campus.
As both a requirement of the internship program at Kent State and Otterbein’s own system, I was required to keep a log of my activities. You can find that along with the descriptions of my work by following this link.
Delaware Guards
In the Kent State course, LIS 61095: Research & Reference Methods for Local History and Genealogy, our project was to put together a website detailing the lives of four Civil War soldiers from a chosen regiment as well as list information on their community and unit’s history. I came to enjoy this project so much, that I chose to continue it after the course was completed.
The unit I chose was the 4th Regiment Ohio Volunteer Infantry. Company C from Delaware County, OH. I obtained a domain to house this project based on the nickname of my chosen unit, the Delaware Guards. You can follow along with the project and learn about the soldiers that fought in this unit at www.delawareguards.com. The site is still fairly sparse at this point in time, but I hope to expand on it over time as life allows.
(Pictured above is the 1910 Census featuring James Crawford, Captain of the 4th OVI.)
Revolutionary War Soldier Memorial
During the fall 2014 semester, I took a class called LIS 61095: Special Topics: Cultural Heritage Informatics. The final project for this class was to create a website providing various details on an object of our cultural heritage. Because I am interested in genealogy, and had recently at the time. found several ancestors who fought in the American Revolution, I chose for my cultural object the Tomb of the Unknown Revolutionary War Soldier in Philadelphia, PA.
The research on the project was compiled into a website that I coded by hand using HTML, CSS, and PHP. Certain elements of the page have broken over time as embedded elements that were used at the time no longer exist. The website can be found by following this link.
Library Program Helper
As a part of my experience with the ILEAD USA 2019 cohort, my team and I developed a website called LibraryProgramHelper.org that intends to serve as a programming hub for library employees across the country.
We focused on three aspects to our site. The first is how to guides for library staff that don’t have experience with programming yet are expect to do so. The second are programs that are ready to present for direct use, or as a starting point for your own similar program. Lastly, we wanted forms such as checklists, timelines, and agreements you can use.
After the three year hosting plan expired, we were unable to find it a new home and the project has since been retired.
Bike Lock Program
Bicycle theft was a problem at the Main Library of the Delaware County District Library. Kids and adults alike would ride their bike to the library, not own a lock, and find their bike stolen by the time they left to go home. This problem led to a unique opportunity to improve our patron’s lives and encourage them to continue to take this form of transportation to the library.
Seeing a need, I approached our director about purchasing some bike locks for the library to lend out for patrons while they are in the building. I received the permission to investigate, and determined a simple U-lock would suffice for the goals of the project. I returned with the information, and we placed an order with a local bike shop in Delaware. When they arrived, I prepared a set of keys to be kept at both the circulation and reference desks, as well as a set to be kept with our master keys. Each lock was labeled, and then a form was created.
The idea behind the form would be to have a simple method of obtaining contact information for the patrons using the bike locks to both keep track of usage, as well as to contact patrons should there be an issue with their bike. Some of the kids that were coming to the library didn’t have a library card and could not obtain one on the spur of the moment without a parent present, so the idea to require a library card was quickly dismissed. This form would suffice by including name, address, and phone number. It also included a password chosen by the patron that would allow them to easily confirm they are the correct patron when they wanted their bike unlocked.
When a patron wishes to have a bike locked up, they fill out the form, and a staff member follows them to the bike rack to lock up the bike. This keeps the keys from entering into the hands of those that might be less responsible with them, and ensures we can keep an eye on the bike rack. When a patron is ready to leave, they supply us with their password, and then we return to unlock the bike once again.
The project is a success, with theft reports becoming a rarity at our branch instead of a semi-regular occurrence.
Massillon Memory
In the spring of 2012 I was working at the Massillon Public Library in Massillon, OH. As a substitute, I was looking for a project to work on during the times I was working. One project that was suggested to me involved digitizing the yearbooks and city directories within their local history room. They had previously built a book scanner, but no one had the opportunity to begin using it.
I started with a couple of city directories that were lent to the library but were not in our collection. From there I began on the collection that belonged to us. The process involved photographing each page using the cameras attached to the book scanner. One camera took images of the left pages and one camera took images of the right pages. Once the book had been photographed, I imported the images onto my computer due to my personal access to certain software such as Photoshop that the library did not have.
In Photoshop, I adjusted the images and saved them in another format. Once the images were all processed, I imported them all in page order into Adobe Acrobat and created one PDF file of the book. Updating the site was a bit of an issue with the former Massillon Memory site, so I asked to have WordPress installed in order to make it easier to update the collection. I used Scribd to host the files because they offered a file viewer that could be embedded into the page itself allowing patrons to view the books right on the site without needing to download them, though they could if they wanted to.
Since I left, the approach has changed for how images are digitized and uploaded. The layout for the website I created with WordPress is now slightly broken from the original creation. The documents I digitized as well were removed and rescanned after the purchase of a new book scanner. The newly digitized copies are now available through Ohio Memory. To learn more about the current Massillon Memory project, please feel free to explore their site.