Projects
Elective Coursework
Title
Islamic Center of Southern California Physical Space Assessment
and
A Volunteer’s Guide to the Islamic Center of Southern California Archive: Getting Started and Working with Metadata
Background
Over the course of two separate classes — IS 431: Archives, Records, and Memory and IS 433: Community-Based Archiving — I had the opportunity to work with leaders from the Islamic Center of Southern California to contribute to the development of their preexisting digital archive as well as to create a plan for the physical preservation of these same objects.
Description
This space assessment identified needs within the building to better preserve documents held by ICSC, and a necessity for a policy so that the collection can be digitized and reviewed by approved researchers. My group recommended a phased approach for accomplishing this work.
View/Download PDF of ICSC Physical Space Assessment
The Islamic Center, with major support from MLIS students between 2021 and 2023, created their digital archive in Omeka and began the process of adding collections. As the archive grew and members of the community expressed interest in contributing to the growth of the archive, leaders of the ICSC identified the need for robust documentation in aiding these volunteers with varying levels of Omeka knowledge in getting started. Additionally, when browsing the archive, leaders expressed that the search function, largely driven by the tags and subjects added to entries, could be improved. To address these concerns, I conducted a thorough review of the folksonomy within the archive, added LC Suggest to the Omeka site, and created a Tag Inventory with future recommendations to assist Omeka users adding metadata to items. This Volunteer’s Guide also consolidated all previously created documentation and could hopefully serve as a one-stop-shop for new volunteers.
Title
Decolonizing Astronomy Zines
Background
These zines served as my final creative project for IS 289 Global History of Libraries: Colonial Pasts, *(Decolonial?) Futures.
Description
These zines attempt to reflect on the tension between Indigenous peoples and their cosmological ways of knowing and western astronomers and their studies, systems, and accompanying infrastructures. The first zines focus on the foundational theory of “astro-colonialism” and the second, a current event that exemplifies this aforementioned tension (the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in Hawai’i).