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Groups for and against medical cannibas dispensaries make conflicting claims that have significant implications for public health and safety, but have gone untested by scholarly analysis. Kintz’s project involved using sophisticated digital mapping tools and demographic data to examine whether and how these dispensaries might be related to crime rates in San Francisco neighborhoods. For his literature review, Kintz relied heavily on OskiCat and Melvyl to find books located in and outside of UC Berkeley’s collections, and a variety of online databases to locate scholarly articles. He worked closely with librarians in the Data Lab and Earth Sciences and Map Library to acquire data on San Francisco and guidance on using the tools required to map the data he found, which ultimately revealed a weak relationship between medical cannabis dispensaries and crime, casting doubt on the claim that the former are “magnets for criminal activity”. Prof. Bimes praised Kintz’s thesis, asserting that “it is both well-written and demonstrates deep engagement with a range of source materials.”

Swanson’s thesis drew on an extensive and varied array of sources on the growth of wind power on China: Chinese language article databases and government statistics, international energy statistics databases, newspapers, journal articles, policy papers, even social media tools used by energy analysts. His attempt to explain how technical and political challenges have affected China’s wind power growth resulted in what Prof. Bhandari described as “simply the best thesis that I have read in ISF.” Even Swanson recognized this achievement, stating that writing this thesis “marked the turning point in my education when I began to produce knowledge, not just consume and regurgitate knowledge.”

Borrman’s Honors Thesis in History of Art examines the history of a famous sculpture, James Earle Fraser’s the End of the Trail, a portrait of a tired, hunched over Native American warrior on horseback. The small bronze quickly attracted great acclaim and has been reproduced an untold number of times as bronzes, bookends, posters and even bookmarks. This paper leverages close readings of numerous archival documents from The Bancroft Library, including original contracts with artists and advertisements and ephemera related to the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exhibition in San Francisco. The San Francisco Chronicle electronic database served as a source for understanding the reception of the sculpture, while resources at numerous other campus libraries helped her trace the many ways the image has been used in visual culture and how interpretations of the image have evolved. According to her professor, “Borrman’s biography of this singular object, following its permutations in and out of art contexts for over a century, is an important achievement.”