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By: Mike Ashenfelder
Many cultural institutions have accelerated the development of their digital collections and data sets by allowing citizen volunteers to help with the millions of crucial tasks that archivists, scientists, librarians, and curators face. One of the ways institutions are addressing these challenges is through crowdsourcing. In this post, I’ll look at a few sample crowdsourcing projects …
Posted in: The Signal
Okay, you’d think a staff member in the Prints & Photographs Division would be capable of making a photograph with better composition than what I achieved last weekend at the National Book Festival. But my photo does at least reflect the reality of the occasion: We had such a steady stream of enthusiastic visitors stopping …
Posted in: Picture This
September signifies many things to us–cooler temperatures, leaves starting to turn, and…back to school! I would like to showcase some of the items requested with increasing frequency as the semester begins. We have some new titles and some that would be helpful if you’re looking for a guide. Most of these are intended for college …
Posted in: NLS Music Notes
By: Stephen Winick
To launch the annual International Conference of Indigenous Archives, Libraries and Museums, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (AFC) and the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries and Museums (ATALM) present a symposium. Titled Civil Rights, Identity and Sovereignty: Native American Perspectives on History, Law, and the Path Ahead, it will take place …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Abbey Potter
The NDSA Infrastructure Working Group’s goals are to identify and share emerging practices around the development and maintenance of tools and systems for the curation, preservation, storage, hosting, migration, and similar activities supporting the long term preservation of digital content. One of the ways the IWG strives to achieve their goals is to collaboratively develop …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Stephen Winick
Note: This blog was updated on July 26, 2024 to add the event videos and make it part of the Homegrown Plus series. At that time the language about these public events was recast into the past tense. Doug Peach, who wrote this as a guest scholar in 2015, is now an AFC staff member …
Posted in: Folklife Today
By: Kristi Finefield
Get your scissors, glue, and a lot of patience ready, because today I bring you a D.I.Y. project from the 19th century. (A basic grasp of French – or access to an online translator – might also come in handy!) Part of a series of “Petites Constructions” created by the French company Pellerin & Cie, …
Posted in: Picture This
By: Erin Engle
This past month, The Keepers Registry released a new version of its website with a suite of significant new features to help its members monitor the archival status of e-journal content. The Library of Congress has been one of the archiving institutions of The Keepers Registry and we thought this was a good time to …
Posted in: The Signal
By: Erin Engle
The following is a guest post by Kalev Hannes Leetaru, a data scientist and Senior Fellow at George Washington University Center for Cyber & Homeland Security. In a previous post, he introduced us to the GDELT Project, a platform that monitors the news media, and presented how mass translation of the world’s information offers libraries …
Posted in: The Signal
“Entered according to the act of Congress” sounds like a grand entry, indeed, and it’s a phrase we are often asked about because it appears near the bottom of many pictures. But what does it mean? Starting in 1802, that phrase was required by U.S. Copyright law to be on works for which a rights …
Posted in: Picture This