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Posted by: Jaime Mears
We went to the SXSW Conference this year to reach an audience of tech developers with our session Hacking the Library of Congress. As you may expect from an emerging technology conference, sessions on virtual reality (VR) (48 sessions) and blockchain (29 sessions) dominated the week. At the Virtual Cinema, attendees demoed a variety of VR …
Posted in: Artificial Intelligence, NDI, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Meghan Ferriter
Today we’re announcing the notable panel of judges who will select the winners of the Library’s ongoing Congressional Data Challenge: a competition asking participants to leverage legislative data sets on Congress.gov and other platforms to develop digital projects that analyze, interpret or share congressional data in user-friendly ways. The four-person panel, composed of experts in data visualization, application development, …
Posted in: Digital Content, digital scholarship, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Kate Zwaard
Today we launch a Congressional Data Challenge, a competition asking participants to leverage legislative data sets on congress.gov and other platforms to develop digital projects that analyze, interpret or share congressional data in user-friendly ways. “There is so much information now available online about our legislative process, and that is a great thing,” said Librarian …
Posted in: Digital Content, digital scholarship, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Meghan Ferriter
On Saturday, 23 September 2017, the LC Labs team joined representatives from cultural heritage organizations, archives, libraries, and historical organizations for DC History for All: Volunteer Fair. The event matched dozens of interested volunteers with opportunities to preserve Washington, D.C. history. There are many cultural heritage and historical organizations located in D.C. that invite the …
Posted in: Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration
Posted by: Jaime Mears
When hosting workshops, such as Software Carpentry, or events, such as Collections As Data, our National Digital Initiatives team made a discovery—there is an appetite among librarians for hands-on computational experience. That’s why we created an inclusive hackathon, or a “hack-to-learn,” taking advantage of the skills librarians already have and paring them with programmers to …
Posted in: Computational Research, Digital Content, digital scholarship, Education and Training, NDI, Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration
Posted by: Abbey Potter
This is a guest post from Sarah Osborne Bender, Director of the Betty Boyd Dettre Library and Research Center at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. I graduated from library school in 2001, just months after Wikipedia was launched. So as a freshly minted information professional, it is no surprise that I fell …
Posted in: At the Museum, Digital Content, digital scholarship, Open Access, Outreach and Events
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
This is a guest post collectively written by the XFR Collective (pronounced “transfer collective”), a grass-roots digitization and digital-preservation organization. They work with artists and media creators to rescue and preserve digital works, utilizing open, free platforms — such as the Internet Archive — for long-term preservation and access. We featured them in two previous …
Posted in: Digital Content, Education and Training, NDI, Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration, Personal Archiving, Tools and Infrastructure
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
The Smithsonian Transcription Center creates indexed, searchable text by means of crowdsourcing…or as Meghan Ferriter, project coordinator at the TC describes it, “harnessing the endless curiosity and goodwill of the public.” As of the end of the current fiscal year, 7,060 volunteers at the TC have transcribed 208,659 pages. The scope, planning and execution of the …
Posted in: Digital Content, NDI, Outreach and Events, Partners and Collaboration
Posted by: Mike Ashenfelder
The presentations at the Library of Congress’ Collections As Data conference coalesced into two main themes: 1) digital collections are composed of data that can be acquired, processed and displayed in countless scientific and creative ways and 2) we should always be aware and respectful that data is manipulated by — and derived from — people. …
Posted in: Digital Content, digital humanities, NDI, Outreach and Events