The Library has appointed Seattle-based artist and developer Vivian Li as its 2025 innovator in residence.
For her project, “Anywhere Adventures,” Li will work with Library staff to highlight unique, amusing and awe-inspiring collection items that enable young researchers to discover the Library’s online resources about their own communities.
Through her popular social media series about the Seattle Fremont Bridge in 2023, Li found others who shared her enthusiasm for entertaining and informative stories about local history.
“With the Library of Congress so far away, I thought it surely wouldn’t have anything for me — but when I started exploring the digital collections, I found so many stories about my town,” Li said.
She recounted searching for Macomb, Illinois, the town she grew up in, and finding a snippet from an Ohio newspaper about bootleggers on the run.
“This led to a string of research about what it was like during Prohibition,” she said.
She ended up learning about a 1921 scandal where a bootlegger in the nearby town of Colchester, Illinois, hired disgraced Chicago “Black Sox” players to play as ringers in a baseball game against Macomb.
“I didn’t even know Macomb used to have a baseball team!” Li said.
As innovator in residence, Li will delve into collections to and share stories on social media “so people might become curious to do some exploration on their own.”
“Anywhere Adventures” will spotlight histories from three U.S. cities to be selected in early 2025. The finished website will provide self-guided tours and activities for each location, all culminating in a personalized “zine” that participants can share with others.
Li is an illustrator, comics artist and web developer. Since graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in computer science, she has been creating projects that combine her visual artistry with her coding skills.
She previously served as an artist in residence creating digital data visualizations for Seattle’s historical Fremont Bridge in a partnership between the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Department of Transportation.
Li published the first volume of her comic cookbook on homemade Chinese cuisine, “ABC Cooking,” in 2023. She has contributed comics to Papeachu Review, Fogland Press and Portland Zine Symposium.
The Innovator in Residence program is an initiative of the Library’s Digital Innovation Division, LC Labs. The program invites arts and technology practitioners to conduct research with Library staff members and demonstrate new ways to engage with archives in the cultural heritage sector.
Comments (3)
I would like to online blog s article volunteer
Your creativity and persistance will be appreciated
I am a director of Japanese American National Library in San Francisco. The Library is a 55 years old institution focus on collection materials on local Japanese communities.
We have a key words database, but it is difficult to put to gather general local historical events or stories such as who started World War II. It was Franklin Delanor Roosevelt. I would like to know how you use your database to search for historical events.