Innovator in Residence, Vivian Li, Visits the Library

This blog post is co-authored by Isabel Brador and Sahar Kazmi. Vivian Li, the Library’s 2025 Innovator in Residence, spent several days learning from Library staff and exploring the collections during a visit to the Library in May.  Her trip followed the selection of Seattle, Southeastern Wyoming, and Chicago as the three locations for “Anywhere Adventures”, which aims to help the public discover unique stories about their hometowns through materials from the digital collections.

During her visit to the Library, Li explored physical materials related to each of the “Anywhere Adventures” sites, working closely with staff from the Researcher Engagement and General Collections Division, as well as the Geography and Map and Prints and Photographs reading rooms. “I’ve been so spoiled by loc.gov that I thought being in the reading rooms would be no big deal. But it was a big deal!” she said. “Being in physical contact with Library items was a very different experience from seeing them online,” Li added. “It was really cool to be able to have a stack of stereographs from Seattle and Chicago and physically put them in the reader and look at them like they were intended, instead of seeing them on your screen and imagining the effect. Way easier on the eyes.”

Li also filmed videos for a series of Instagram reels about the Library and some of its services, like Ask-A-Librarian. She spent an afternoon learning about the service and creating video content showcasing librarians’ research skills. “When I talk to people in real life in Seattle about Ask-A-Librarian, they cannot believe that it is a real person on the other end,” she said. “It’s always shocking to them, and afterwards they’re excited and immediately start thinking of questions they’d like to ask.”

Li’s trip to the Library comes off the heels of her research engagements with communities in Wyoming and Chicago. Her conversations with local residents and user feedback from Library staff will guide both the development of the “Anywhere Adventures” website and the collections showcased within it. “It has been really helpful to know what content will be interesting and novel to the audiences we are developing for and find leads on interesting stories about these regions,” Li said.

Historical transportation infrastructure is particularly interesting to the innovator, who previously served as an artist in residence creating data visualizations about Seattle’s Fremont Bridge in a partnership between the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and the Seattle Department of Transportation. For her Library research, she worked closely with a Laramie, Wyoming, resident to gather details about the city’s history, its origins as a Western town and the influence of railroads on the region. She also captured stories about Chicago’s history on this topic, collecting information about the city’s grid system, street design and railroad industry.

Li said the Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record/Historic American Landscapes Survey (HABS/ HAER/HALS) collection from the Prints and Photographs Division has been especially valuable to her research. To understand how collection items relating to these topics would resonate with users, she posted videos and stories to her social media accounts to gather preliminary feedback from the public. Li’s documentary-style “informative” content, in which she narrated digestible facts about a collection item and its history, proved the most popular. Several viewers commented that they enjoyed learning history in this format.

She also demonstrated a prototype version of “Anywhere Adventures” to Library staff and gathered feedback to help fine-tune its user experience. Her current design features an introductory page where users can select their preferred location, followed by navigation tabs that group topics by interest area or stories from Library collections. Users can create their own personal maps of local spots or save Library collection items to explore later. Li has also hand drawn mini comics to accompany and interpret many of the items showcased throughout “Anywhere Adventures.”

Among other recommendations from staff, the Prints and Photographs Division suggested Li use shortened variants of existing photo captions, since the original catalog record text can be long or difficult to understand. The Digital Accessibility team from the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) conducted an initial review to ensure the website’s core features are developed accessibly. Based on their feedback, Li is now creating an improved map experience and updating the site’s metadata. Although the content of final interactive website will be designed with Seattle, Chicago and Southeastern Wyoming in mind, Li hopes to encourage all Americans to connect with the digital collections through her work. “Anywhere Adventures” will feature an exploratory “World” section including photos, maps, letters and other Library items for non-residents to browse the stories from all three locations and learn about their histories.

Keep your eye on The Signal to continue following Li’s work and for updates on “Anywhere Adventures”.