Menu
University of Michigan School of Information

LAKES Mastery Course - SI 699

A student standing in a library next to bookshelves. Text on the image says LAKES Mastery.

Proposal open date: June 1
Proposal close date: November
Project timeline: January-April
Project duration: 15 weeks 
Number of projects needed: 15

Submit a Project Idea View our Client Guide

Description

In SI 699: LAKES Mastery Course, master's-level graduate students lead special projects relating to librarianship, archival practice and/or digital curation. Project areas could relate to instruction, service design, assessment, collections, community engagement or other areas within librarianship or archival work. Digital curation projects could additionally include plans, procedures and documentation for the management, organization and curation of large data sets and collections.

Deliverables

  • Deliverables will vary by project and are based on the client needs and project scope. Examples may include:
    • Final reports with recommendations
    • Digitization plan for archive
    • Tool kit of resources
    • Reference guide
    • Metadata curation and associated reports
    • Recommendations on data curation best practices

Client Requirements 

  • Level of client engagement for course/program
    • 30-60 minute weekly or bi-weekly meetings with the student team
    • Regular feedback and communication to student team based on the course schedule
    • Introduction to stakeholders and users for interviews and/or data gathering
    • Access to organizational data, systems and/or resources necessary to project completion
    • Attend final presentation
    • Complete project evaluation
  • Project requirements for the course/program
    • Provide 100 hours of work per student (students may work individually or in teams of two)
    • Provide a range of work that is diverse, allows for autonomous decision making and requires significant non-clerical duties
    • Be amenable to students scoping the project further once client match is confirmed 
  • Special project requirements for digital curation-focused projects
    • Relate to the following areas of interest:
      • Digital curation workflows
      • Data wrangling
      • Metadata projects
    • Possess large sets of data or information that require complex strategy and/or management
    • Provide students with offsite access to their data before the start of the course
    • Designate a primary contact who knows and understands the data or collection (preferably someone specialized in digital curation)

Past Projects

  • Archival Recommendations. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) lacked an online database for digital records. Students identified, analyzed and recommended solutions for archival infrastructure to make it easier for users and staff to search for and access records with consistency.
  • Developing a Museum Digital Preservation Policy. Students collaborated with the Swedish American Museum to create a tailored policy and a set of implementable processes for preserving digital content.
  • Mobilizing Library Resources for Rural Community Outreach. Students worked with Menominee County Library to expand its wi-fi hotspot program. Students created an assessment tool for internet use and a plan for the library to use existing mobile resources to build relationships in the community.
  • Collections Diversity Audit. Students assisted the Clinton-Macomb Public Library in performing an audit of their collections for diversity, equity and inclusion. Students cleaned the collected data, assessed it and presented the information in a report to library staff and management.

Client Testimonials

  • "The student helped us explore what qualitative assessment might look like for our organization related to collections assessment and how it might inform decision-making processes. This would directly affect faculty, staff and students in their ability to access and browse materials in our collections. It was very helpful to have someone take the time to review this aspect of our work and provide us with considerations for the future."
  • "The student gave me a plan of action and recommendations that saved me a couple of months of research—months I didn't have. Her plan will allow the archive to hire a student assistant and provide access to archival data for the whole campus."
  • "The results of this project will have a national impact on how we access legacy science data. The students helped us create a workflow for processing floppy disks, which will enable us to retrieve legacy data for new work. This is something that we hadn't had time to develop on our own, but now we're planning to share this workflow with other science centers in our organization who are also struggling to process floppy disks."
    • Anonymous Client
  • "The student's work will help us streamline our collections metadata management process, and allow us to offer expanded services and reporting capabilities to our members. Thanks to their recommended solution, we look forward to being able to offer a public, web-based interface for our members to view their collections metadata."

Past Clients