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Residency Program: From the Classroom to the Workplace

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The following is a guest post by Lyssette Vazquez-Rodriguez, Program Support Assistant & Valeria Pina, Communication Assistant, both with the Office of Strategic Initiatives at the Library of Congress

Residents in the inaugural class of the National Digital Stewardship Residency program have been busy at their host institutions since mid-September. The residents agree that during their first weeks of work they did what they know best: research.

Residents-Jefferson Building
This year’s class of Residents. (Photo credit: Molly Schwartz)

Jaime McCurry, resident at the Folger Shakespeare Library, explained, “Right now my work is very research-oriented. Over the course of the residency, I am preparing an annotated bibliography on various resources related to Web Archiving. I’m looking to provide an overview of the current landscape and also to find interesting sources pertaining to Web Archiving in the humanities, specifically. I’ve also performed Quality Assurance tasks on the Folger’s current Web Archive collections and I am in the process of discussing new collections to be added with our Collection Development team.”

Molly Schwartz (Photo credit:  Molly Schwartz)
Molly Schwartz (Photo credit: Molly Schwartz)

Erica Titkemeyer, resident at Smithsonian Institution Archives, who is working with time-based media and art, explains that, “a typical day at my office tends to be low-key, since I work alone researching at my own workstation. As of now I have carried out a significant amount of research related to the current state of time-based media art (works of art which depend on technology and have duration as a dimension) to conservators within museum settings.”

In addition to research, some of the residents have had the opportunity to meet with scholars from the field of digital preservation. Molly Schwartz, who is a resident at the Association of Research Libraries, attended an informational meeting of Dr. Jonathan Lazar, Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at Towson University.

Margo Padilla (photo credit:  Molly Schwartz)
Margo Padilla (photo credit: Molly Schwartz)

Margo Padilla, a resident at the University of Maryland, said, “I recently conducted several interviews with electronic literature scholars on their expectations for access to born-digital literary collections. These interviews will help inform the development of the access models I will produce by the end of the residency.”

This is only just the beginning of the residency; the residents are very thrilled with what they have been doing so far and they are eager to continue learning and helping their host institutions complete their objectives.

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