Skip to main content

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’

Before I joined LC Labs, I was an English teacher. In my classroom, the word “derivative” had a negative connotation. To be derivative was to be overly indebted to another idea and thus to lack ingenuity and creativity. When applied to datasets, however, “derivatives” abound. In fact, as you’ll see, derivative datasets sometimes serve a […]

A look at FADGI with Librarian1

Today’s guest post is from Hana Beckerle, a 2021 Librarian-in-Residence at the Library of Congress. I graduated with my MSLIS from Catholic University of America (CUA) in May 2021 and joined the Library’s Digitization Services Section (DSS) as a Librarian-in-Residence in June. While at CUA, I worked as an Electronic Resources Assistant at the University […]

That’s Our Cue! Updates for th

This is guest post, the first in a series of updates about the recent work of the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio-Visual working group, is co-authored by Kate Murray, Digital Projects Coordinator in Digital Collections Management and Services, audiovisual archivist and technologist Dave Rice, and Jérôme Martinez, Founder and President of MediaArea.net. Fig. […]

Next Slide Please: 2021 Digita1

This summer, the Digital Strategy Directorate, home to LC Labs, hosted seven interns working on projects to broaden the reach and potential impact of our initiatives. This is the first of two interviews with the 2021 summer cohort discussing a group activity they undertook in teams. In this post, I sit down with Emily Zerrenner, […]

That’s a wrap! 2020 Staff Inno

The 2020 Staff Innovator project brought together two different parts of the Library of Congress—the Library Collections and Services Group (LCSG) and the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO).  LCSG sponsored a 120-day detail that temporarily placed a staff member from LCSG in my team, LC Labs to work together on a problem that […]

LC Labs Letter: November 2020

LC Labs Letter: November 2020

November 2020 LC LABS LETTERA Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Our Projects It’s not too late: apply to be a CCHC researcher today! The call for researchers to work with Library collections at scale as part of the Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud (CCHC) project is […]

An Archivist’s Perspective on

This is a guest post by Chad Conrady, Archives Specialist in the Manuscript Division. Alongside Senior Archives Specialist Kathleen O’Neill, Chad is a 2020 Staff Innovator working on the project Born Digital Access Now! In previous blog posts, Chad and Kathleen have shared publicly about their project, whose central aim is to research and understand […]

Analyzing the Born-Digital Arc1

Kathleen O’Neill is a 2020 Staff Innovator with LC Labs and a Senior Archives Specialist in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress. She’s shared about Born Digital Access Now!, her Staff Innovator project, in previous posts. In this post, she discusses her analysis of the various file formats in the Manuscript Division’s born-digital […]

LC Labs Letter: August 2020

LC Labs Letter: August 2020

August 2020 A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Job Announcements WE’RE HIRING! The Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is seeking an Innovation Specialist (GS-12) to work with our curators and reference librarians supporting reference questions that require data […]

Metaphors for Understanding Bo1

Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born digital materials through the lens […]

Metaphors for Understanding Bo1

Kathleen O’Neill, Senior Archives Specialist Kathleen O’Neill is currently serving as one of two Staff Innovators at the Library of Congress. Their 2020 project, Born Digital Access Now!, explores existing pathways for accessing born digital materials in the Manuscript Division. In this series of blog posts, Kathleen describes the complexities of gaining access to born […]

Metaphors for Understanding Bo1

The following is a guest post by Senior Archivist Kathleen O’Neill. Kathleen and her colleague Chad Conrady are currently working on a project called Born Digital Access Now! as the 2020 Staff Innovators in LC Labs. Their first blog post introduces the project, which aims to provide greater access to born digital materials held in […]

LC Labs Letter: July 2020

LC Labs Letter: July 2020

July 2020 A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Our Projects  Introducing the 2020 Staff Innovators! LC Labs is thrilled to welcome Kathleen O’Neill and Chad Conrady aboard our team for the next four months as the 2020 Staff Innovators. Their project Born Digital Access Now! will explore methods for […]

Introducing the 2020 Staff Inn1

LC Labs is thrilled to welcome Kathleen O’Neill and Chad Conrady aboard our team for the next four months as the 2020 Staff Innovators. Their project, Born Digital Access Now!, will explore methods for providing access to born digital materials in the Manuscript Division and prototype select tools on a digital workstation. They’re working on this project […]

LC Labs Letter: June 2020

LC Labs Letter: June 2020

A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Our Projects  New experiments launch on labs.loc.gov! Speech to Text Viewer The Speech to Text Viewer is an experiment to test, document, and refine ways to increase accessibility to American Folklife Center collections using off-the-shelf transcription tools. This proof-of-concept tool shows […]

LC Labs Letter: April 2020

LC Labs Letter: April 2020

A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Editor’s Note As it did for many people across the country and all over the world, the month of March brought new ways of working and communicating and challenging, complex circumstances for the LC Labs team. We found our way through […]

More Open eBooks: Routinizing 1

This is a guest post by Kristy Darby, a Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section in Library Services. Figure 1. Youjeong Oh’s Pop City: Korean Popular Culture and the Selling of Place, one of the open access books available from the Library of Congress collections. We are excited to share that anyone […]

LC Labs Letter: February 2020

LC Labs Letter: February 2020

A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Apply to be the next Innovator in Residence! The Library of Congress Innovator in Residence program is a competitive residency for outside researchers or practitioners to creatively use the Library’s digital collections. The first Innovator was data artist Jer Thorp and […]