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Archive: 2021 (16 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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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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‘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 …

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A look at FADGI with Librarian-in-Residence Hana Beckerle

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Hana Beckerle, a 2021 Librarian-in-Residence at the Library of Congress. I graduated with my MSLIS from Catholic University of America (CUA) in May 2021 and joined the Library’s Digitization Services Section (DSS) as a Librarian-in-Residence in June. While at CUA, I worked as an Electronic Resources Assistant at the University …

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Summer 2021 Volunteer Survey: What Motivates ‘By the People’ Volunteers?

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Abby Shelton, a community manager for the By the People crowdsourced transcription program. Launched in 2018, By the People is a volunteer engagement and collection enhancement program at the Library of Congress that invites the public to explore and transcribe Library of Congress digital collections. When transcriptions are completed by …

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Using Crowdsourced Lincoln Transcriptions: An Interview with Jon White

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

By the People volunteers have helped the Library of Congress return over 52,000 transcriptions back to loc.gov, making the Library’s collections more discoverable and accessible for all. To celebrate the impact our virtual volunteers have on the Library and its patrons, we are highlighting some of the ways that scholars, educators, and community members have …

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FADGI’s embARC: Extending embedded metadata support and validation for DPX and MXF files

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

Today’s guest post is from Kate Murray, Digital Projects Coordinator in Digital Collections Management and Services at the Library of Congress and Bertram Lyons, Partner and Managing Director for Software at AVP. Note: This is the last in a series of updates from the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio-Visual working group. See That’s …

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Reading the (Same) Signals: Using FADGI’s ADCTest for Quality Control in Outsourced Audio Digitization

Posted by: Carlyn Osborn

This is the second in a series of updates from the Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Audio-Visual working group. See That’s Our Cue! Updates for the FADGI Embedded Metadata Guidelines and BWF MetaEdit for the Cue Chunk in Broadcast Wave Files for the first installment. This post is co-authored by Kate Murray, Digital Projects …