Unlocking 9,000 stories of Chinese American history in Chicago

A 9,000-title library collection locked in a single spreadsheet, accessible only by appointment. That was the access problem three UMSI students spent their spring break solving. MSI students Sam Kowitch and Chenxi Jiang and BSI student YuFeng Lin spent one week in the Windy City working with the Chinese American Museum of Chicago's library, home to 9,000 donated books on Chinese and Chinese American history, literature, philosophy, art and more. The museum’s mission is to make that collection a living cultural and educational resource — but without a searchable catalog, visitors couldn’t browse or find materials, leaving most of the collection effectively invisible. The UMSI team’s task: Turn a static spreadsheet into a public-facing catalog, searchable by title, author, keyword and ISBN, and filterable by subject. With 9,000 books and one week, classifying each book by hand wasn’t an option. Instead, the team used prompt engineering — fine-tuning criteria until an AI system could classify the collection accurately — then applied it across all the titles. “Before going into this, I thought it would be more about designing an interface. But I soon realized this would actually be using skills I didn’t really think of as being in my wheelhouse, at first. It would entail a lot more data cleaning. I was glad I had taken SI 506, Python, because otherwise I definitely would have had less communicative ability with my team,” Kowitch said. Alternative Spring Break pairs UMSI students with social impact organizations for a week of hands-on work: data, archives, UX, or, as with this project, some combination of all three. Video description: Text reads "Alternative Spring Break Chicago" on a photograph of three students standing in front of a large mural. Sam sits for the interview in a bright study area of an academic building. Photos show students working on library, archives and data related work with community organizations. Video shows the Chicago skyline from Lake Michigan and a timelapse of a busy Chinatown street. Photos show UMSI students looking over thousands of books in the Chinese American Museum of Chicago and working on laptops and code. Video shows a high perspective of a busy Chicago street and a train running on an elevated platform. A group photo shows more than 50 UMSI students and alumni gathered for a networking and happy hour event. The video closes with a sunset view of the Chicago skyline.