LC Labs Letter: March 2021

As we’ve shared before, the Of the People program connects the Library of Congress more deeply with Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and other communities traditionally underrepresented in library collections by expanding its collections, using technology to enable storytelling and offering more internship and fellowship opportunities.

We’re sharing a few of the program’s posts as a spotlight in this month’s newsletter and also encourage you to get program updates directly in your inbox by subscribing to the Of the People blog!

Here are some ways you can engage with the program through the blog’s latest posts:

• Apply for internships: The Of the People blog recently announced that applications are now open for the Fall session of the Archives, History, and Heritage Advanced Internship Program. This part-time, remote internship offers undergraduate juniors and seniors, graduate and doctoral students the chance to work on collections and projects that will help the Library more fully represent the rich cultural heritage of the United States.
• Explore the collections: The “Discovery in Digitized Collections” blog post explores collections whose titles don’t necessarily give clue to the diverse contents and stories of communities of color.
• Understand context for the Community Collections Fellowship Program: in this post, the American Folklife Center shares how the Occupational Folklife Project helped to inspire the development of the Community Collections Fellowship program.

Our Projects

Stay “in the loop” with LC Labs experiment combining crowdsourcing and machine learning

In 2020, LC Labs began the Humans in the Loop experiment to pilot the creation of interfaces that intentionally combine crowdsourcing and machine learning approaches. We are collaborating with data management solutions provider AVP as they develop a framework for ethically, engagingly, and usefully incorporating human expertise into training data and increasing machine learning literacy through crowdsourcing. The experiment aims to create an experience that is both engaging and educational for users and builds directly on LC Labs’ sustained exploration of machine learning in cultural heritage and efforts in developing human-centered crowdsourcing projects.

Have you participated in crowdsourcing projects like By the People at the Library of Congress? We’re interested in your perspectives as we continue to iteratively design this experiment. If you’d be willing to participate in a user interview, you can fill out this form: https://www.research.net/r/9WCYFWJ.

If you’d like to learn more, check out this introduction to the project on our blog or get in touch with us at LC-Labs@loc.gov.

Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud welcomes new staff 

The Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud (CCHC) project is thrilled to welcome Olivia Dorsey to the team! In this interview with fellow Digital Strategy Directorate member Leah Weinryb Grohsgal, Olivia shares about her background, experience, interests, and what she’ll be doing to help the Library provide enhanced access to digital collections as data.

Olivia is one of two Innovation Specialists joining CCHC–keep an eye out on the Signal Blog for a second interview with Alice Goldfarb, who is also joining the team.

Curio

• Fill out the Library of Congress/American Alliance of Museums Visitor Survey to help us better serve you! Access the survey directly or read more about it in this blog post. 
• The votes are in! Congratulations to 2020 Innovator in Residence Ben Lee and the Newspaper Navigator dataset for winning the Best DH Dataset at this year’s DH awards. 
• Celebrate Women’s History Month all year long by exploring the history of women’s suffrage through this Library of Congress primary source set.

To subscribe to the monthly LC Labs Letter, visit https://updates.loc.gov/accounts/USLOC/subscriber/new?topic_id=USLOC_182

For more information about LC Labs, visit us at https://labs.loc.gov/

Questions? Contact LC Labs at LC-Labs@loc.gov