Nearly two years ago, the Library of Congress announced the creation of a brand new crowdsourced transcription program: By the People. This news was shared here on the Signal and at the 1-year mark. Can you believe it’s already time for a 2-year celebration?! As a quick recap, By the People is a volunteer engagement and […]
Category: crowdsourcing
Finding By the People Transcriptions in the Library’s Digital Collections
Today’s guest post is from Dr. Victoria Van Hyning, who served as a By the People Community Manager at the Library from 2018-2020. Starting in Fall 2020, she will be an Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at the University of Maryland iSchool, where she will continue her research on crowdsourcing, outreach, and inclusion. The […]
LC Labs Letter: April 2020
LC LABS LETTER A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Editor’s Note As it did for many people across the country and all over the world, the month of March brought new ways of working and communicating and challenging, complex circumstances for the LC Labs team. We found […]
Newspaper Navigator Surfaces Treasure Trove of Historic Images – Get a Sneak Peek at Upcoming Data Jam!
Projects like Newspaper Navigator are busy unlocking even more digital content for members of the public to access from home. On May 7th at 2pm EST, Innovator in Residence Ben Lee will host a virtual data jam to experiment and play with thousands of images—including maps, advertisements, comics, and more!—from historical newspapers dating to the 1800s. In this post, Ben discusses his aspirations for engaging the American public with the millions of images he extracted from Chronicling America.
New Collaboration between LC Labs, British Library, and the Zooniverse
Announcing preliminary details for Arts & Humanities Research Council UK-US Partnership Development Grant awarded jointly to the the British Library, the Zooniverse, and the Library of Congress. The project is titled “From crowdsourcing to digitally-enabled participation: the state of the art in collaboration, access, and inclusion for cultural heritage institutions.” Several opportunities to participate are described.
LC Labs Letter: December 2019
LC LABS LETTER A Monthly Roundup of News and Thoughts from the Library of Congress Labs Team Keeping up with the Innovators This month, Brian Foo and Ben Lee came back to the Library to gather feedback from staff in the early stages of their project and to showcase working prototypes. Brian presented his project […]
Celebrating a year with By the People
Celebrating the 1 year anniversary of By the People, the Library of Congress crowdsourcing platform that engages volunteers to explore and connect to Library of Congress collections while enhancing searchability, readability, and research use of digitized collections. In the last year over 11,000 volunteers have registered and even more have contributed anonymously to complete transcription of over 31,000 digital collection pages, with 55,000 awaiting peer review.
Announcing International Collaborations on Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions
The following is an announcement from funding and cultural organizations from the United States and the United Kingdom about a new collaboration supporting digital scholarship. The Library of Congress Labs team is co-hosting a workshop to kick-off international collaborations around digital scholarship. Partners in the UK and the US are coming together to collaborate on the […]
Let’s go! Explore, transcribe, and tag at crowd.loc.gov
This is a guest post from Lauren Algee, LC Labs Senior Innovation Specialist. Connect with Lauren and her fellow crowd.loc.gov Community Managers Elaine Kamlley and Victoria Van Hyning via History Hub and on Twitter, as well as GitHub. What yet-unwritten stories lie within the pages of Clara Barton’s diaries, writings of Civil Rights pioneer Mary Church Terrell, or […]
New strategy! New crowd! New team!
Big news! We’ll launch a crowdsourcing program at the Library of Congress on October 24. We’re asking everyone to join us as we improve discovery and access across our diverse collections through transcription and tagging. The program is grounded in what we’ve learned through our previous experiences with participatory projects at the Library, including image […]