Archive for 2017 (43 posts)

Announcing Judging Panel for the Congressional Data Challenge

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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, the U.S. Congress and congressional data, includes:

  • Andy Boyle, a writer, web developer, speaker and director of Platform Architecture at Axios, a digital media company. Boyle previously worked for a variety of news outlets including NBC News, the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Globe, the St. Petersburg Times and The New York Times Regional Media Group, where his work was cited in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Reporting.
  • Paul Ford, a journalist, programmer and co-founder of Postlight, a digital product studio in New York City. Ford is author of “What is Code,” published in 2015 in Bloomberg Businessweek, a breakthrough piece that reveals how computers, applications and software work.
  • Lisa LaPlant, an information-technology specialist within the Office of Programs, Strategy and Technology at the Government Publishing Office. LaPlant supports strategic initiatives, organizational transformation and government transparency by utilizing agile frameworks to manage complex, mission-critical, public-facing technology programs and projects.
  • Frances E. Lee, a professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland who teaches courses in American government, the public policy process, legislative politics and political ambition. Lee’s research focuses on American governing institutions, especially the U.S. Congress. Lee is co-editor of Legislative Studies Quarterly, a scholarly journal specializing in legislatures and author of multiple books on the U.S. Congress.
Illustration of U.S. Capitol Building

The Congressional Data Challenge will run from 19 October 2017 through 02 April 2018.

The panel will evaluate entries based on three criteria: usefulness, creativity and design. The Library of Congress will award $5,000 for the first prize and $1,000 for the best high school project. Honorable mentions may be awarded for best tracking of legislative status, best data visualization and best data mashup.

Entries are due April 2, 2018, and must be submitted through the challenge.gov platform; see rules and additional information on the Library of Congress Labs site. Read the Library of Congress press release.

The Time and Place for PDF: An Interview with Duff Johnson of the PDF Association

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The following is a guest post by Kate Murray, Digital Projects Coordinator at the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress is both a producer and collector of PDFs and has recently joined the PDF Association as a Partner Organization. At the upcoming PDF Day organized by the PDF Association, the Library of Congress will […]

Memory Lab Network: An interview with Project Manager Lorena Ramirez-Lopez

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Applications are being accepted until December 15th to participate in the Memory Lab Network, an Institute of Museum and Library Services National Leadership Grant facilitated by DC Public Library (DCPL) in partnership with the Public Library Association (PLA) to create free public access to tools and information on caring for personal digital archives. Seven public […]

Lowering barriers to using collections in an NDSR workshop with Shawn Averkamp

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This is a guest post by Charlotte Kostelic, National Digital Stewardship Resident with the Library of Congress and Royal Collection Trust for the Georgian Papers Programme. Her project focuses on exploring ways to optimize access and use among related digital collections held at separate institutions. This work has included a comparative analysis of international metadata […]

Welcoming Laura Wrubel and exploring digital scholarship at the Library of Congress

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In November, the LC Labs team welcomed Laura Wrubel as she kicked off her research leave in residence with the Library of Congress. Over the next 3 months, she’ll explore digital scholarship with our team and how it might be best supported. We checked in with her to learn more about her goals, background, and […]

October Innovator-in-Residence Update

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Library of Congress Innovator-in-Residence, Jer Thorp, has started diving into the collections at the Library. We’ve rounded up some of his activities in October and how he is sharing his process in this post. Jer has created a “text-based exploration of Library of Congress @librarycongress‘ MARC records, specifically of ~9M books & the names of […]

Announcing the Library of Congress Congressional Data Challenge

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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 […]

New FADGI MXF AS-07 Specification and Sample Files Published

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The following is a guest post by Kate Murray, organizer of the FADGI Audio-Visual Working Group and Digital Projects Coordinator at the Library of Congress. The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) is pleased to announce the publication of a new version of the MXF AS-07 Application Specification (with CC BY-SA 4.0 license) and its […]

Take the NDSA 2017 Web Archiving Survey

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This is a guest post co-written by Grace Thomas, Data Specialist for Web Archiving at the Library of Congress, and Maria Praetzellis, Program Manager for Web Archiving at the Internet Archive, on behalf of the NDSA Web Archiving Survey Working Group. This announcement originally appeared on the Archive-It Blog on October 3, 2017. Calling all web archivists: it’s that […]

DC History For All: Volunteer Fair Event Summary

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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 […]