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Archive: 2021 (55 Posts)

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Volunteer Vignette: It’s fun to figure out the puzzle!

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

In today’s post, Abby Shelton interviews a By the People volunteer, Maya, who has gone above and beyond! By the People is a crowdsourced transcription program launched in 2018 at the Library of Congress. Volunteer-created transcriptions are used to make digitized collections more accessible and discoverable on loc.gov. You can read our most recent Volunteer Vignette on the Signal here. Abby: What motivates …

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The Open Access Books Collection: Expanding Access and Building Connections

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

This is a guest post by Kristy Darby, a Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section at the Library of Congress. In March 2020, we first shared about the growing collection of open access e-books available on loc.gov. A lot has changed since then but, in particular, the Open Access Books Collection was …

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Library of Congress Digital Collections Strategy Published

Posted by: Trevor Owens

The following is co-authored with Joe Puccio, the Library of Congress Collection Development Officer. Digital collections, and the work related to their acquisition, preservation and access, have become increasingly central to Library of Congress processes and our mission to serve Congress and the nation. For the last five years, in accordance with the Library of …

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Fun with File Formats

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Kate Murray, Marcus Nappier, and Liz Holdzkom of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division at the Library of Congress. Are you a file format fan? If you’re curious how to pronounce the still image format HEIF (spoiler alert: it rhymes with “beef”) or the difference between PDF/A-3 and PDF/A-4, …

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Annotation as Aesthetic: A Closing Interview with Innovator in Residence Courtney McClellan

Posted by: Leah Weinryb-Grohsgal

2021 Innovator in Residence Courtney McClellan created Speculative Annotation, an experimental browser-based application that encourages students and teachers to have conversations with historic Library of Congress items through annotation and mark-making. McClellan is a research-based artist who lives in Atlanta, Georgia. With a subject focus on speech and civic engagement, McClellan works in a range …

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It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a…derivative dataset!

Posted by: Eileen J. Manchester

This post describes a collaboration between LC Labs member Eileen J. Manchester and Peter DeCraene, the Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow to answer the question: "what would it mean to treat a dataset as a primary source?"

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Reflecting On a Year of Selected Datasets

Posted by: Pedro Gonzalez-Fernandez

Introduction The Selected Datasets Collection was publicly launched June 2020 as part of the Library’s ongoing efforts to support emerging data-driven styles of research. Since then, our initial offering of twenty datasets has grown to nearly 200 unique items, and we’ve continued to refine the technical workflows by which content is prepared and delivered to …

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‘By the People’ Turns 3: A Year in Review

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

It’s that time again: another By the People anniversary! To celebrate the third birthday of crowd.loc.gov, we thought we would share some highlights from this past year. Interested in our previous anniversary posts? Check out our Year 1 and Year 2 celebrations on the Signal. As a quick recap, By the People (BtP) is a volunteer engagement and collection enhancement program at the Library of Congress that …