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The following is a guest post by Josh Levy, Historian of Science and Technology in the Library’s Manuscript Division. What’s a historian to do with a born digital file? On Christmas Day, 1854, between family gatherings and fretting over the cost of living in Washington, engineer Montgomery Meigs was notating his plans to build a […]
Spotlight was developed by Stanford Libraries in 2013/14 as open source software, to provide a solution enabling librarians, curators and others to create attractive, feature-rich websites that highlight digital collections. This has facilitated its adoption by many universities as a primary digital exhibit platform. In turn, Stanford benefits from community sharing of inspiration, design and […]
On February 8, 9, and 10th 2021, 175 people from across the globe met for the 6th annual Geo4LibCamp. This time the conference was hosted online using the Zoom platform. Previous Geo4LibCamps have been hosted on Stanford University’s campus at the Hartley Conference Center and in the David Rumsey Map Center. This year’s online event […]
Last year, LC Labs worked with partners across the Library and outside its walls to advance the Digital Strategy. Here’s a look back at some of our work on the strategy’s goals of opening the treasure chest, connecting, and investing in our future, and a preview of this year’s plans. In the coming year, we […]
Since 1908, the American Library Association’s (ALA) Midwinter Meeting has taken place 107 times, with only a few pauses. Held virtually, this year’s Midwinter was the last in its current format; next year ALA will launch LibLearnX, a learning, networking, and collaboration experience scheduled for January 21–24, 2022, in San Antonio. Though this year’s event […]
January 2021 LC LABS LETTERA Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Reflecting on a new season When people hear the word “innovation,” they may think of doing things in a way that is new and, for lack of a better word, “unprecedented.” In a time and world where […]
Well this seems like good news. One of the biggest annoyances of trying to do research on Twitter, IMHO, is the difficulty in obtaining older tweets. There are workarounds, such as using a previously-captured dataset from Documenting the Now, or collecting via snscrape, but it seems there is now better official access for researchers via […]
The following is a repost from the blog Of the People. The author is Kate Zwaard, Director of Digital Strategy. Chicago, Illinois. Painting class at the South Side community art center. Jack Delano, photographer. 1942. You may have seen the news about the Library’s exciting new program Of the People, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, […]
Emmanuel Acho. Photo: Ali Rasoul After the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in May 2020, Fox Sports analyst and former NFL linebacker Emmanuel Acho felt compelled to do something. He, a Black man and son of Nigerian immigrants, was receiving questions from white people asking about racism and how to […]
Today’s guest post is from Grace Thomas, Senior Digital Collections Specialist on the Library of Congress Web Archiving Team. You can read more about the Web Archiving Team right here on the Signal. In the web archiving community, we build the plane and fly it simultaneously. While this pattern is present in most disciplines, web […]
Walk the streets of any U.S. city today, and you might come across historic markers or masonry etchings indicating what the buildings used to be. It is always fascinating to learn what our neighborhoods, cities, and towns used to be —factories turned residences, street names changed, the places and spaces our predecessors lived, ate, and […]
The American Library Association (ALA) announced 10 winners of its I Love My Librarian Award on January 11. Recipients were nominated by patrons nationwide for their expertise, dedication, and profound impact on the people in their communities. “During an unprecedentedly challenging year, librarians have risen to the occasion, providing much-needed resources to their communities from […]
The American Library Association’s (ALA) 2021 Midwinter Meeting & Exhibits Virtual, originally scheduled for January 22–26 in Indianapolis, was always planned as a transitional event that would lead to an innovative new conference concept in 2022. The pandemic, however, necessitated bigger changes than anticipated, as ALA announced in August that this year’s meeting would be […]
ALA Headquarters Move After 57 years on East Huron Street in Chicago’s River North neighborhood, ALA headquarters relocated to Michigan Plaza at 225 N. Michigan Avenue. ALA Welcomes New Executive Director Tracie D. Hall began on February 24 as the American Library Association’s (ALA) new executive director (ED). The 10th ED—and the first female African-American […]
A Lakota camp in 1891. During his presidency, Benjamin Harrison forced the Sioux Nation to divide among separate reservations in the Dakotas and sent the military to Wounded Knee. Photo composite: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Harrison, Lakota, tipis) For 67 years, Princeton (N.J.) University’s School of Public and International Affairs bore the […]
Our collective knowledge of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, continues to evolve as researchers across the world work to understand and combat the virus. In such an uncertain information landscape, establishing best practices isn’t easy; it requires library workers to balance community needs with the best available guidelines for limiting the virus’s spread. Since […]
Illustration: ©Feodora/Adobe Stock In January 2019, Jade Alburo, librarian for Southeast Asian and Pacific Island studies at UCLA, wrote a Twitter thread that recounted a patron’s experience searching a large academic archive. When the patron could not find materials on Vietnamese or South Vietnamese subjects, archives staffers suggested that he search with a pejorative term […]
107Number of times the American Library Association (ALA) has held its Midwinter Meeting since 1908. This year’s event, which will be conducted virtually, is the last in its current format; ALA plans to introduce a new concept for 2022. 7Number of times that ALA did not host an annual Midwinter Meeting since its inception. No […]
Ziggy Marley When eight-time Grammy Award–winning reggae artist and philanthropist Ziggy Marley released Family Time, a well-received children’s album, in 2009, he didn’t plan to do more projects geared toward youth. But when the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, he found himself at home full-time with his own kids and a new puppy. What resulted […]
Batesville (Ind.) Intermediate School students held a read-a-thon to raise money for the nonprofit Grain of Rice Project. Photo: Batesville (Ind.) Intermediate School In 2019, Batesville (Ind.) Intermediate School began a book club using selections inspired by the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the organization’s blueprint for addressing global challenges like poverty and […]
