Computational Data Services: An Interview with Rachel Trent

Today’s post is an interview with Rachel Trent, a Senior Digital Collections Data Librarian here at the Library of Congress.

Carlyn: Hi Rachel! Could you tell us a bit about your role here at the Library of Congress? What do you like most about your job?

Rachel: I’ve been working in libraries and archives for about fifteen years, and I like to say that my job is to give away more things, to more people, over more time, in more enjoyable and considerate ways. I currently specialize in getting Library content into the hands of computational users. These are users who want to fetch and analyze Library of Congress collections as data, and they generally employ some sort of automated methods for retrieving, analyzing, and/or repurposing collection material. This might look like a local historian doing a mapping project at scale with collection photographs, a high schooler learning to use library APIs, a digital artist experimenting with collage and computer vision, a political scientist studying online discourse with web archives, and so many other scenarios.  

Formally, I serve as a Senior Digital Collections Data Librarian in our Digital Collections Management & Services Division, where I help to coordinate our Computational Data Services program. This program supports services geared towards computational patrons, such as the LoC.gov API, LoC.gov Text Services microservice, LoC.gov Image Services (IIIF) and Streaming Services, Selected Datasets Collection, Web Archive datasets, By the People transcription data, and Data Packages.  

C: What part of your work do you find most meaningful or engaging?

R: The Library of Congress has an enormous range of collections and collection data (like this and this and this), and working with that data every day is brain candy. It’s genuinely fun. At the same time, the work also engages broad cultural questions about value, impact, agency, and sustainability. That’s a really rich intersection to be able to work at, where the technically delightful meets the socially consequential. This work exists in a long tradition of grappling with what it means to quantify the human experience and find meaning in data. The image above is a nod to that history. It’s my favorite visualization from early U.S. Census data visualizations, due to its beauty and complete absurdity.

C: What do you think is the biggest thing you’ve learned so far in working at the Library of Congress?  

R: The Library of Congress has more data than I imagined, and context is everything. The data becomes most usable and meaningful when we share information about its history and how it was created. If you’re looking for more information about Library of Congress data, its contexts, or how to access it, we invite you to reach out to the Computational Data Services program via the Computational Data Services contact form.