Chris Reynolds
MLIS Portfolio | 2025
Graphics & Data
During my MLIS I took the opportunity to use and expand my understanding of visual design through data driven classes and projects involving content creation and curation. This built on skills of design and storytelling gained in my undergrad in digital art. These projects focus on communicating raw data. I used different techniques including data analytics via coding with R, Python, and UNIX; visualizing data with traditional graphs, software, and programing; and exploring text corpora via text mining and natural language processing.
Tour de France – Info-graphic
Using Tableau, Photoshop, & Canva
Tour de France – Presentation
Using Tableau, Photoshop, & Canva
Using R to Uncover Differences between Fake and Real News
Co-Authored Research Poster – Outstanding Student Presentation Award Winner
R & Adobe Premiere Pro
EV Charging Locations
Tableau, Photoshop, & Canva
Social Media
Over the past two years I’ve participated in student leadership, as a board member of Association for Information Science & Technology Student Chapter (ASIS&T SC) and the Society of American Archivist Student Chapter (SAASC) at San Jose State. One of the key goals of student groups is to put on virtual events. These events need to be advertised, recorded, and archived. During my two years with ASIS&T SC I created social media posts, website banners, and YouTube thumbnails for a number of the chapters events.
Archival Projects
My past internships and several classes I took have centered Archival processing for physical and digital materials. I’ve done extensive work in arrangement and description for processing at the collection, series, folder, and item level using a variety of programs including PastPerfect, ArchivesSpace, ContentDM, and Perservica. For a longer explanation of my understanding in this field, check out my “Collection” page.
University of Nebraska at Omaha, Archives Internship
Summer 2024
During the summer of 2024, I completed a 100-hour internship at the University of Nebraska at Omaha Archives and Special Collections. The internship included working with processing, outreach and digital archivist
Under the supervision of the processing archivist I inventoried, arranged, and described the UNO Native American Studies (NAS) Program Records and created metadata for their website through ArchiveSpace. This task gave me first hand experience with all of the main steps in processing a small collection by sorting the material by types and subject matter, selecting items that should remain in the collection or should be re-homed elsewhere, evaluating items quality in case items require extra attention to ensure proper preservation, preparing the items for long term storage in appropriate archival folders and boxes, and describing the collection in detail on ArchiveSpace. You can see my Finding Aid here.
With the digital archivist I digitized over 125 newspapers. Steps in the process included: scanning individual pages via a Bookeye over head scanner; re-naming and ensuring files were in the correct order with Adobe Bridge; fixing any extreme visual issues in Adobe Photoshop; combining the files into a single PDF per newspaper issue; creating Optical Character Recognition (OCR) text in Adobe Acrobat; and organizing the files into the correct folders within UNOs database.
Finally with the outreach archivist I conducted research into the Omaha Queer Archives. I read about and recorded important individuals, events, organization, and places mentioned in The New Voices first 8 issues, a queer newsletter that circulated in Omaha and Lincoln starting in the early 70’s. This list is useful for researchers as the current digitized versions of this newsletter are a bit blurry and difficult to read. In addition, this information may be added into the items metadata via ArchivesSpace and used to create a zine for traveling displays that highlight the history of this minority group.
Digitization of Northern California Menus
Class Project using Content DM
To the right are slides and a collection tour of a class project that shows my competency of materials selection, evaluation, and preservation.
This project occurred piece by piece over a semester. In a group of three, we collected, scanned, and created Dublin Core metadata for 30 menus. Our collection was uploaded in a temporary website through ContentDM.
The material for our collection was our choice but we needed to consider legal use and possible copyright issues. We chose to focus on mom and pop restaurants versus chains as this is more indicative of local food culture and is less likely to have any copyright issues arise. However, once we started collecting menus it became clear that many local places aren’t making or using takeout menus anymore.
As this was a group project, many of the decisions were made through conversation after individual research. Within the collection we each gathered ten menus, digitized them, uploaded them to ContentDM, and created the metadata for our own menus. To ensure consistency we created guidelines.
For the Slides, I led our visual development for the presentation and fully created slides 1-2 & 11-17. I also filmed and created a small script for the collection tour. Additionally, the metadata I created can be found in this spreadsheet.
Websites
For both the ASIS&T SC and SAASC, I held a year long term as the groups Webmaster. I used WordPress to update the chapters website; keeping up with changes to different pages and helping to think through different information restructuring efforts. To check out the archived WARCs of the sites via the way back machine, use the links below.
Chris Reynolds
MLIS 2025
As a driven Library and Information Science graduate, 2025 from SJSU, with a strong foundation in archival practices and information management, I’m passionate about harnessing new technologies to enhance information infrastructure and improve user experiences.