Work Portfolio
I worked in many professional settings from local community groups to large institutions throughout my career. In these workplaces, I was an archivist, information specialist, communications manager, instructor, and media producer. I enjoyed and grew from these varied work experiences and selected several projects and positions to feature.
Subject Specialist Archivist & Consultant
280 Charles E. Young Dr., North, Los Angeles, CA
University Archives
• Performed collection appraisal and wrote descriptions of university archives holdings through online finding aids
• Processed faculty papers and department administrative records, including archival appraisal, description, and preservation
Collecting Los Angeles Project
• Contributed to Collecting Los Angeles Project's mission of documenting ethnic communities by cultivating donor relations with Southern Californian Asian American communities and cultural heritage organizations
• Appraised and accessioned subscription of local community newspaper published by Chinese American organization in the San Gabriel Valley
• Re-surveyed and re-appraised UCLA Library Special Collections' Southern Californian Chinese American Oral History Project, including finding aids, indexes, and oral history interviews in English, Mandarin Chinese, and Cantonese Chinese
Center for Primary Research and Training
• Re-surveyed, re-appraised, and edited finding aids of the Japanese American Research Project (JARP) Collection
EthnoCommunications Trailer
• Center's administrator and office manager, duties included: grant writer and manager, fiscal budget and financial manager, supervising student interns, and academic advising
• Supervised and directed the Center's digital media production and post-production lab; duties included: purchasing and maintaining video equipment and supplies, instructional support of lab's equipment for dept. courses, and managing film library
• Taught courses about community media-making, documentary filmmaking, visual ethnography, and oral history methodology for the Center in the Asian American Studies Department
• Project Manager of the Center's Residents of the Firm: Video Oral History Project
• Project Manager of the Center's Eye to Eye: Asian American Artists oral history project, funded by a multi-year (3 yrs.) grant from the National Endowment of the Arts
• Planned and organized the Center's 2-day community media conference, EthnoCommunications: Documenting Multiethnic Communities
Community Documentarian & Archivist
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(from) A Community of Friends
Friends of the Chinatown Library, Chinatown Branch, Los Angeles Public Library
• Produced and directed the documentary film, Community of Friends, about the founding of the Los Angeles Public Library's Chinatown Branch Library
• Conducted oral history interviews of Friends of the Chinatown Library founding members
• Digitized the FOCL photography collection
Project Archivist
Gold Shield Alumnae of the University of California, Los Angeles
James West Alumni Center, Los Angeles, CA
• Inventory and appraise administrative records of Gold Shield Alumnae organization: its past presidents and executive board
• Reprocess Gold Shield Record Collections at UCLA Library Special Collections, merging them with recently collected materials from the organization's members
• Review and edit Gold Shield Record Collections' finding aids on the Online Archives of California (OAC)
• Develop digital infrastructures for Gold Shield digital records
• Facilitate donor relations with Gold Shield members
RDA/US Data Share Fellow
Research Data Alliance (RDA) Postdoctoral Fellowship
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation & National Science Foundation; Data to Insight Center, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN
• Conducted research that examined how digital platforms and metadata tools are applied to describe and analyze unstructured visual life oral histories data
• Developed digital infrastructures for oral histories archives and collections
• Participated in Digital Practice in History and Ethnography (DPHE) Interest Group and Empirical Humanities Metadata Working Group to explore, develop, and define emerging intellectual inquiries and initiatives in history, ethnography, and humanities as they intersect with digital data and access
• Presented research at Research Data Alliance Plenaries in Montreal, Canada, and Berlin, Germany