Student Assistant – UW-Madison Music Library
Curated, catalogued, and dispatched thousands of music-collection items while modernising data workflows for campus-wide access.
Overview
Manage and organise a diverse catalogue of books, CDs, LPs, cassettes, DVDs, and legacy analog formats. Streamlined metadata workflows in Alma and optimised shelving and retrieval, accelerating patron requests across campus and to partner libraries statewide.
The Challenge
Legacy cataloguing practices slowed fulfilment and obscured collection visibility. Needed a scalable way to surface 30 000+ music items spanning multiple media formats.
The Solution
Refactored item records in Alma, introduced scripted bulk-updates via SQL/Python, and redesigned the physical layout for faster pick/pack. Built dashboards in R/Python to monitor circulation KPIs.
My Thoughts
The role blends my love for music with data engineering: every improvement translates into richer discovery for artists, students, and researchers.
Key Achievements
- Cut average request-turnaround from 24 h to 6 h
- Re-catalogued 5 000 legacy LPs and cassettes for digital discovery
- Created visual dashboards that highlight collection-usage trends
Project Gallery
Project Details
Date
Oct 2023 – May 2025
Location
Madison, WI (On-site/On-campus)
Technologies