Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’s digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates.

---

NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund

Spanning the years 1915-1968, with most dating from 1940 to 1960, these records document the work and procedures of the organization as it combated racial discrimination in the nation’s courts, establishing in the process a public interest legal practice that was unprecedented in American jurisprudence. The organization’s records cover a host of topics, including segregation in schools, on buses, and in public facilities, discrimination in housing and property ownership, voting rights, police brutality, racial violence, and countless other infringements of civil rights.

Law Library Medieval and Renaissance Manuscript Books to 1600

This initial release presents the first 23 items in a collection of more than 90 manuscript books about law dating from before 1600 AD and representing a variety of languages and jurisdictions. The dates of their production range from the early 13th century to the end of the 16th century, and the texts contained in them represent more than fifteen hundred years of legal tradition from classical antiquity through the Middle Ages. They pertain to jurisdictions covering the Mediterranean basin, Western Europe, and the British Isles, and they cover legal systems including Roman law, canon law, feudal law, and the customary law of the European kingdoms as well as those kingdoms’ statutes.

Benajah Jay Antrim Journals

The journals of Benajah Jay Antrim (1819-1903), a chemist, photographer, mathematical instrument maker, and artist are now available on loc.gov. They are comprised of three volumes of handwritten diary entries, two complementary volumes of pencil or pen-and-ink drawings, and watercolor images of his February – April 1849 journey from Philadelphia, PA, to San Francisco, CA, through Mexico.

Additionally, over 1,700 new Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available from Slovakia, ranging from 2020-2023, and 50 new recordings were added to the PALABRA Archive. Read more about this exciting PALABRA release on the Library’s 4 Corners of the World blog: Fifty New Recordings from the PALABRA Archive Now Available.

New music and maps datasets

A new dataset was created from the Motion Picture, Broadcasting & Recorded Sound Division’s “Show Music on Record” database. And there are now 11 different versions of the OpenStreetMap global data layers, covering 2014 to 2024. Want to learn more about accessing and using datasets from the Library? Check out this helpful resource: Datasets at the Library of Congress: A Research Guide.

Chronicling America now extends back to 1736!

The Library of Congress regularly receives digitized newspaper content from award recipients (contributors) in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Content is delivered in the form of batches, where each batch can contain one or more issues, from one or more newspapers. Recently loaded batches can be discovered on the Chronicling America Research Guide. More details about the batch can be discovered by clicking on the batch name link!

Thanks to a recent batch from the Library of Virginia containing the Virginia Gazette, Chronicling America now goes back to September 3, 1736, extending Chronicling America another 20 years! This newspaper was published using the Julian calendar, which was still being used in England and its colonies until 1752. You will notice that the first two weeks in September 1752 appear to be missing, though there are no missing issues from that month. This is because the Julian calendar dropped 11 days in that year to align with the more accurate Gregorian calendar. We still use the Gregorian calendar today.

Other titles that we recently added include:

• El Tucsonense, one of the most influential and longest running Spanish-language newspapers from Tucson, AZ
• Danbury Times, an early 19th century title from Danbury, CT
• Genius of Universal Emancipation, an antislavery newspaper from Hennepin, IL
• The Courier-Journal, a long-running newspaper from Louisville, KY, which was digitized in color
• Le Journal du Madawaska, a French-Canadian newspaper from Van Buren, ME
• Toledo, the second Hungarian-language in Chronicling America from Toledo, OH
• Der Izraeliṭ, a Yiddish-language newspaper from Providence, RI
• Southern Christian Advocate, a Methodist Episcopal newspaper from Charleston, SC
• The Milwaukee Leader, a Socialist party newspaper from Milwaukee, WI (below!)

What’s new onsite via Stacks?

New items are added every week into stacks.loc.gov – the Library’s primary onsite platform for accessing restricted digital content. To learn more about Stacks, check out this video from our team: Access the Digital Stacks On-Site at the Library of Congress!

Recent highlights from Stacks include new St. Marks poetry recordings from the Rare Book Division, content from the Pandemic Folk Architecture collection from American Folklife Center, and select titles from the Japanese Censorship collection from the Asian Division. Other highlights from Stacks include Pickleball fundamentals / USA Pickleball, Translating for museums, galleries and heritage sites, Art law: a concise guide for artists, curators, and museum professionals, and Peace by design.

And some seasonal additions to Stacks include Can you escape a haunted castle?: an interactive paranormal adventure, Our favorite Halloween recipes, Spooky haunted house: DIY cobwebs, coffins, and more, Great MLB World Series championships, The World Series: baseball’s fall classic.

Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.

Updates from the Web Archives

Two web archive collections have been described and made more discoverable to users. The Local History and Genealogy Web Archive includes websites for local genealogical and historical societies in the United States, as well as ethnic-specific content for researchers interested in genealogy related to particular groups. And the Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan Government Web Archive includes a broad overview of national and regional politics, economics, social conditions, and the state of religious freedom in the titular countries of Central Asia (below).

October 27th marks Theodore Roosevelt’s 166th birthday and we’re hoping you can help us celebrate the occasion!

Yesterday, the By the People crowdsourced transcription program released over 20,000 new pages of TR’s papers into crowd.loc.gov. We’re calling on all #TedHeads (our favorite TR fans) to join us in transcribing these materials to make the Library’s digital collections more accessible and discoverable for all. Click the links below to go directly to these two brand new transcription projects now available for volunteer transcription:

14. Nov. 18, 1912-Apr. 18, 1913: Hired Pen

15. Apr. 19, 1913-May 13, 1914: The River of Doubt

All you need to get started is a keyboard, a browser, and an interest in history! Everyone is welcome to contribute to and you do not need to register to transcribe. However, if you’d like to create an account with the program, you unlock additional features not otherwise available. These include a downloadable service letter, a way to track your past contributions, and the ability to review the transcriptions of other volunteers. You can learn more about how By the People works in other blog posts here on the Signal – check out this dedicated tag to view them. 

As you’re exploring crowd.loc.gov, you might notice two different transcription campaigns dedicated to America’s 26th president, only one of which is active. “My great mass of papers”: Correspondence of Theodore Roosevelt was launched in 2020 as a Library staff telework project, but has since been opened to the public and completed earlier this month (you can read more about that here). Rough Rider to Bull Moose: Letters to Theodore Roosevelt was also launched in 2020 and has grown to consist of 15 distinct projects for everyone to contribute to – including the two new projects launched yesterday!  

So far, over 6,000 registered (and an untold number of anonymous) By the People contributors have transcribed more than 250,000 pages of Roosevelt’s papers. And some of these transcriptions are already powering enhanced search, discovery, and access of TR’s papers on loc.gov: click here to see transcriptions side-by-side with their original Library collections.  

This most recent batch of transcribable materials contains many gems and we hope you’ll share some of your finds with us along the way. Below are a few examples of what you might encounter from this new addition: 

If you’re wondering what kind of impact crowdsourced transcription has on discovery and access here at the Library, you’ll want to check out this blog post from my fellow Community Manager, Abby Shelton: Do volunteer transcriptions improve search and discovery in loc.gov? And if you’re curious about how the team picks collections for transcription and what happens to the data, you’ll want to read this blog post from By the People’s Senior Community Manager, Lauren Algee: The crowdsourced transcription lifecycle – from conception to retirement.

We’re anticipating releasing the entirety of the correspondence series in the Roosevelt collection for crowdsourced transcription over time – so stay tuned for more TR ‘drops’ in the future! We’ll see you in the arena.

Today’s blog post is an interview with Liz Caringola of the Digital Services Directorate here at the Library of Congress. You can read other interviews with digital collections staff here.

---

Carlyn: Hi Liz, could you tell us a bit about what you do in the Digital Services Directorate? How would you explain your job to someone outside the Library of Congress? What do you like most about your job? 

Liz: I am a Digital Collection Specialist in the Digital Collections Workflow Section. I’m still very new to this job, but my understanding is that our section is responsible for acquiring and preserving digital content and making it as widely available as possible. This often means adding digital materials to the Library’s public website so that people from across the country and the world can make use of the Library’s extensive collections without having to travel to DC. For digital materials that have copyright or other rights concerns, they are loaded into a system called Stacks for onsite researchers to use.

I’m thrilled that this position allows me to combine my expertise as a librarian and archivist with a lifelong interest in technology and coding. As a teenager, I taught myself HTML and CSS so that I could build websites, so I really enjoy the technical aspects of my job and being able to utilize scripting and other tools to make routine tasks more efficient, accurate, and scalable.

C: Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and journey. In particular, what professional or educational experiences prepared you for your role?

L: My earliest professional experiences were working on digitization projects. I digitized archaeological records while I was studying anthropology and history as an undergrad. Hands-on digitization experience coupled with what I was learning in class led me to pursue a career as an archivist. I wanted to make information—especially the one-of-a-kind, unpublished records held by archives—more widely accessible. I got my MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh, and then moved to the DC-area to briefly work for the National Archives’ digitization partnership with Ancestry.com. Next, I worked at the University of Maryland (UMD) as the project manager of the Historic Maryland Newspapers Project, which digitizes and contributes newspaper content to the Library’s Chronicling America database. After a few years, I moved on to a new role at UMD as the Archival Metadata Librarian in Special Collections and University Archives. I was responsible for coordinating the creation, enhancement, and transformation of metadata in order to make special collection materials in all formats discoverable and accessible to the UMD community and the public.

Returning to a role that focuses on digital materials feels full circle to me. I’m excited that this position will allow me to grow beyond digitization and to participate in the full lifecycle and ongoing maintenance of digital collections.

C: What part of your work do you find most meaningful or engaging? 

L: Although my role doesn’t directly interact with the Library’s researchers or the general public, I find the most meaning in knowing that my work allows people to discover and access information that they may not have been able to find otherwise. There are many barriers that may prevent people from physically visiting libraries and archives. Making digital materials available online doesn’t solve all of those problems, but it does help.

C: Do you have any advice for people interested in getting into the kind of work you do? Are there any skills or competencies that you think are really important for folks that want to get into this field to develop? 

L: For anyone who is interested in the digital side of libraries and archives, there are a lot of specializations within this domain, and not all of them require that you know coding, for example. Soft skills and project management can be just as valuable. My advice is to think about what your existing strengths are, what specific roles interest you the most, and to map out your professional development plans from there.

If you’re not sure what skills you should be trying to build, a piece of advice someone once gave me is to keep a folder of job postings that interest you and that you want to be qualified to apply for. Periodically review them, see what requirements they have in common, and identify gaps in your skill set. I think this is something that people at any stage of their career can do, but I especially recommend this to students so that they can adjust their coursework or seek out internships or other opportunities to try to start building those skills before they’re on the job market.

C: Aside from work, what sorts of things are you passionate about? Do you have any hobbies or interests that you’re up for sharing out with folks?

L: This first one is still work-related, but I am passionate about improving labor practices in libraries and archives and was an active member of the DLF Working Group on Labor in Digital Libraries, Archives, and Museums for several years. As someone who lives outside of DC and has a long commute, I am a huge fan of podcasts. Most of my favorites are comedy-related, but I also love a good spooky paranormal podcast. I enjoy spending time with friends and taking a stroll through historic downtown Frederick, Maryland, where I live. Finally—and I guess it’s obvious since I am a librarian, but it feels weird not to say it—I love reading!

Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’s digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates.

---

What’s new on loc.gov?

 

Warp and Weft of Yap’s Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia 

The Habele Outer Island Education Fund in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) was one of 10 projects chosen to receive a 2022 Community Collections Grant (CCG) from the American Folklife Center to document traditional lavalava cloth weaving on the Ulithi Atoll.  Undertaken through the Library’s “Of the People: Widening the Path” initiative, the resulting collection consists of 23 oral histories documenting the knowledge and artistry of women from the Outer Islands of Yap, who weave the beautiful and highly valued lavalava cloth, which remains an essential element in maintaining cultural traditions and community relationships among contemporary Remathau (People of the Sea).

The audio interviews are conducted in Ulithian, the Micronesian language spoken on Ulithi and neighboring Fais Island, with English logs provided for each. Obtaining substantial fieldwork in this previously under-represented language enables the American Folklife Center to expand its holdings of the roughly 500 languages currently represented in its archives. 

A few collections updates

Over 20,000 images have been added to the Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 collection. “Letters of Delegates” includes all the documents written by delegates that bear directly upon their work during their years of actual service in the First and Second Continental Congresses, 1774-1789, as well as some diaries, public papers, essays, and other documents. These new scans of the 26-volume set are presented with full text and downloadable PDFs, and provide the means for a comprehensive, in-depth examination of the operations of the Continental Congress during the critical years of the founding of the United States. 

Additionally, 633 new Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available from the Czech Republic, ranging from 2019-2022. And also newly available is a program for a 1954 baseball game between the Kansas City Monarchs and the Indianapolis Clowns from the Branch Rickey papers. See below!

Special feature: Check out these new LibGuides!

Our colleagues across the Library publish thematic library research guides (called ‘LibGuides’) that we want to highlight this issue. Dozens were published over the summer and here a just a few – we hope you’ll visit guides.loc.gov to view more!

Jewish Composers: Resources in the Library of Congress Music Division

Cold War Resources in the Manuscript Division 

Indigenous Peoples of the Americas: A Guide to Resources at the Library of Congress 

More than a dozen new datasets are now available

Three new dataset items relating to music and dance were added to the Selected Datasets collection recently: Dataset of the Tap dance in America database, Dataset of the U.S. ISMN public archive database, and Dataset of It’s showtime!, sheet music from stage and screen database. “Tap Dance in America” showcases performances and biographies of performers for what is an uniquely American dance genre. The International Standard Music Number (ISMN) is a unique identifier for notated music, and the U.S. ISMN Public Archive documents the use of ISMN in music publishing in the U.S. “It’s Showtime” is a database of the M1508 class of sheet music in the Music Division’s collections, which is designated for show music from the 19th and 20th centuries.  

A new geospatial dataset has been added to the collection OpenStreetMap 2020 global data layers. The data is structured into eight geographic regions and is available in two format options: both shapefile and geopackage. Additionally, new versions have been added for Creepypasta: [collected datasets], National Enquirer Index and Database Files, and Rodney Fort’s Sports Business Data Pages. 

And the By the People crowdsourced transcription program published four new datasets this summer. They are the full-text transcription datasets for the following transcription campaigns (below) and you can find all 23 By the People datasets cataloged and available in the Selected Datasets collection on loc.gov.

1. James A. Garfield Diary: “His Confidential Friend”  
2. “Such Eventful Times”: Women and the American Civil War 
3. The Blackwells: An Extraordinary Family 
4. Anna E. Dickinson Papers 

New African American and foreign language newspapers

in Chronicling America through NDNP

The Library of Congress regularly receives digitized newspaper content from award recipients (contributors) in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). Content is delivered in the form of batches, where each batch can contain one or more issues, from one or more newspapers. Recently loaded batches can be discovered on the Chronicling America Research Guide. More details about the batch can be discovered by clicking on the batch name link!

Of note are newly-added African American newspaper titles such as Washington Grit (1884), The Gary Colored American (1927-1928), Twin City Observer (1943-1963), and The Saint Paul Sun (1941-1963). And check out our new foreign language newspapers: Amerikanski Srbobran (Serbian, 1906-1963), Le Messager (French by way of Lewiston, ME, 1880-1945), and El Tucsonense (Spanish, 1915-1957).

You may also like to browse through newly-available issues of The Virginia Gazette (ranging from 1766-1774), which was published in Williamsburg, VA by Clementina Rind, the first female newspaper printer in Virginia. View an excerpt below!

What’s new onsite via Stacks?

New items are added every week into stacks.loc.gov – the Library’s primary onsite platform for accessing restricted digital content. To learn more about Stacks, check out this video from our team: Access the Digital Stacks On-Site at the Library of Congress!

Recent highlights from Stacks include new St. Marks poetry readings from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, a newly digitized microfilm newspaper title Dnevni avaz, state government reports from California and the California Energy Commission, a new Croatian legal gazette, Narodne Novine, and Japanese maps from the Geography and Map Division. 

Some selected new titles include The story of ice cream, Women’s muscle & strength: get lean, strong, and confident, Triceratops, Teen guide to the supernatural, and Social media and the news. And some seasonal additions to Stacks include The summer Olympics: world’s best athletic competition, Katie Ledecky, Simone Biles: dominant gymnast, August, Sofia’s first day of school, Betty the yeti and the first day of school, Good dogs only. 

Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.

Updates from the Web Archives

Two web archive collections have been described and made more discoverable to users on loc.gov. The Gender Issues in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan Web Archive documents the status of women, transgender communities, and other sexual minority groups in the four targeted countries. Due to the shortage of financial resources available for print publications, most gender-related information from these countries is available only as digital content and is in urgent need of being acquired and preserved for present and future researchers. 

And the American Folklife Center Web Archive aims to capture digital content related to the Center’s collectors and collections. It includes websites of many artistic, historical, and cultural institutions that have been creating or gathering ethnographic content. 

Today’s guest post is from Abbie Grotke, Head of the Web Archiving Section.

---

If you look back in The Signal archives, you’ll see that we post every four years about a collaborative project that the Library of Congress is involved in to archive United States government websites during the end of presidential terms. This project, called the “End of Term Web Archive,” has kicked off again as election season is underway. Web archivists from across the country are working together and plan to start the archiving process in a few months—and we could use your help.  

The Library of Congress already actively collects many federal government websites, and staff from the Web Archiving Program and Serial and Government Publications Division are contributing a list of URLs to the project. Our list will be combined with other bulk lists of .gov domains to create “seed lists” that will guide the web crawler to where we want to capture content. This will be a good starting point for collection, but we also need the public’s help to identify content we might have missed. 

If you would like to participate in this project, the nomination forms are now open! The End of Term project team is accepting nominations for content that is of interest to YOU—we are asking government information specialists, librarians, political and social science researchers, academics, students, and the general public to assist in the selection and prioritization of content to be included in the archive.  

We welcome recommendations for anything that counts as a U.S. federal government website in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches of government, as well as associated social media accounts. Also in scope are federal government websites on other domains such as .mil, .edu, and .com. We are especially interested in prioritizing websites that could change dramatically or disappear at the end of this presidential term. Out of scope are local or state government websites, non-government websites (including those documenting the election), and news websites about the government. Please be mindful of these guidelines as you are making nominations. 

To learn more about the project, you can read blog posts from two of our collaborators, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the Internet Archive. Researchers can also access and download bulk data from our prior archiving activities here. 

To see United States government content in the Library of Congress web archives, start with a visit to the Newspaper and Current Periodical Reading Room website. 

Today’s guest post is from Liz Holdzkom, Marcus Nappier, Genevieve Havemeyer-King and Kate Murray of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division and Ted Westervelt, Chief, US/Anglo Division at the Library of Congress.

---

The Recommended Formats Statement (RFS) is now entering its second decade since it was first launched in 2014. Suffice to say, it remains an important tool for both the Library of Congress but also the wider community who seek to create, collect and preserve published works in all forms. Just this past year, there were approximately 40K page views by almost 15K unique visitors around the globe. The resource has evolved over its lifespan to reflect not only changing priorities and capabilities but also its impact on the cultural landscape.

The 2024-2025 edition brings several significant changes. First, as described in detail in a recent blog post, the RFS has introduced support for digital accessibility features as a criterion for evaluating digital formats. It’s important to consider a format’s capacity for accessibility features as user expectations evolve, such as tagged or structured text, embedded captions and timecode for audiovisual content, and labeled table headings for datasets. However, the RFS does not require these accessibility features to be enabled for content in LC collections. An updated template of the evaluation matrix with sample data is available for download.

Also new this year is a FAQ or Frequently Asked Questions in response to user feedback. This addition covers topics such as “What does preferred and acceptable formats mean in the context of the RFS?”, “What is the review cycle of the RFS?” and “How to submit comments and questions.” We hope this resource further supports use of the RFS, and of course, comments are always welcome through rfs@loc.gov.

The RFS 2024 also brings several impactful changes to the language of the RFS, especially with print materials. While digital formats included in the RFS have a structured evaluation matrix (see our template with sample data linked above) to help with the yearly discussions and deliberations by the content teams, recommendations for print data in Textual Works and Musical Scores were revised this year thanks to feedback from colleagues newly recruited into the process.

There is also a new format addition, DDP or Disc Description Protocol, as an acceptable format for Audio – Media-independent (digital). And BITS (Book Interchange Tag Suite) moved from a preferred to an acceptable format for Textual Works – Digital. Other notable changes include additions and updates to preferred formats for Audio Works, as well as new components for preferred metadata for Datasets.

A detailed list of all the changes is available in the Change Log, and in addition to the HTML version, the RFS is also available as a PDF.

Comments are welcome below or through rfs@loc.gov.

The following is a guest post by Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Jeffrey Yoo Warren. You can read more about his residency project, Seeing Lost Enclaves, in previous blog posts and on the experiment page.

This past May was a big month for the Seeing Lost Enclaves project, but one day in particular was the most meaningful to me. Throughout my project,  I’ve struggled with how to share the relational reconstructions I’ve created, virtual as they are, in ways which are tactile, multisensory, and immersive. A sense of space is fundamentally different when experienced in community, and it has been important to me to make these historic Asian American spaces accessible – not only to present-day Asian American communities, but intergenerationally.

I had an opportunity to bring these neighborhoods to life in a unique way. My virtual reconstructions of five historic Asian American communities had been hidden at sites across the US, as well as at the Library of Congress, as part of my month-long Hidden Portals event. And while it has been powerful for people to experience these spaces, especially as site-specific installations (in fact, they were not visible unless you were physically present at one of the ten portal sites), I was eager to imagine a different way of accessing these portals. And in particular, looking back to my original proposal for the Innovator in Residence program, I was interested in engaging kids and their families in developing relationships with these histories.

 

On May 11th, the Library of Congress hosted a AAPI Month Family Day, and I saw it as a great chance to connect with Asian American families through a participatory workshop. I envisioned a mask-making activity, where kids could construct their own tiger head masks, based on a cardboard design I had created for previous workshops, including Tigers & Portals in Providence last year. The mask integrated a VR headset made of cardboard, so that by wearing the mask, kids could be transported to these historic sites. Tigers are a recurring motif in my work, and in some Korean and Chinese traditions are posted as a protective symbol on doorways.

Together with collaborating artists Vuthy Lay and Aisha Jandosova, and thanks to the support of Jaime Mears, Sahar Kazmi and others at the Library of Congress, this vision came together without a hitch, and close to 70 masks were made over the course of the day.

 

 

 

Behind the scenes, this took some considerable coordinating, from site logistics (including explaining to on-site Library staff that there would be a lot of kids with cardboard tiger heads wandering around that day) to the re-design of the mask for manufacturing at a cardboard box company. For weeks, I would trace and cut prototypes, and occasionally receive photos back of a test cut at the factory in California. I was resolved to create a kit simple and intuitive enough for kids to build themselves using just velcro. I had also imagined how to “sneak” the masks unobtrusively into or out of the Library (of course, they were pre-cleared, but they’re bulky and strange to be putting through metal detectors). Each tiger mask folds up and fits into an archival folder, a reference to where I had found the photographs from which these reconstructions are created.

At the workshop, all this work paid off as even quite young kids (with some grownup help) got their masks built, and were able to travel through time, in a sense, to these moments from 1870-1914. It was a challenge to think through how to introduce these histories to kids, given the important but traumatic history of anti-Asian violence in this time period. For this, however, I relied on the incredible work of author Linda Sue Park, and especially her book Prairie Lotus, a speculative historical fiction novel for middle grade readers, which tells the story of a Chinese American girl moving to a rural town in South Dakota in the 1800s. I also recommend the educators guide for this book, which she links to from her website. I think for many of these kids, as for myself, it will be a lifelong journey of gradually understanding our relationships with these stories. The masks will continue to work for some time, and I hope we can continue to visit these long-ago spaces for years to come.

Today’s guest post is from Kate Murray, Marcus Nappier, Liz Holdzkom and Genevieve Havemeyer-King of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division at the Library of Congress.

---

It’s hard to believe that this is our sixth installment of file format fandom blog posts! The traditional sixth anniversary gift is something made from iron but that seems like a pain to giftwrap. So just send us good vibes, comments and questions instead.

Way back in 2021 with our inaugural post, Fun with File Formats, we had only eight content categories with approximately 480 FDDs or format description documents. Three years later, we have 12 content categories and 568 FDDs. Any way you slice it, we have been busy. If you are imagining that meme with the cat frantically typing on a laptop, that is an accurate representation of your favorite Formats team at work.

New Format Descriptions Galore

Without a doubt, the main contributor to our impressive FDD output this year was the now-concluded contract with Myriad Consulting (Ashley Blewer, Frances Harrell and Abi Simkovic). Their good work contributed 32 new entries to the Sustainability of Digital Formats, alongside seven new entries authored by Library of Congress staff.

As Marcus explained in How to Write a FDD in 149 Easy Steps: Learning to Evaluate Digital File Formats, researching and writing an FDD is a collaborative and labor-intensive task so there are lots of fingers in all these FDD pies. It is the ultimate group project.

Since our last blog entry in December 2023, we posted the following new FDDS in specific areas of focus:

• Mobile device support: APK, Android Package (FDD 592); IPA, iOS App Store Package (FDD 593); Apple_ProRAW (FDD 594); and XAP, Silverlight Application Package (FDD 595).
• Packaging, software and installation support: LNK, Microsoft Windows Shortcut File (FDD 596); DS_Store, Desktop Services Store (FDD 597); class, Java Virtual Machine Class File Format (FDD 598); gzip (FDD 599); and bzip2 (FDD 600).
• Email and personal information management (PIM): TNEF, Transport Neutral Encapsulation Format (FDD 485); MLM, GroupWise Email Format (FDD 614); EMLX, Apple Mail Email Format (FDD 615); and vCard, Virtual Card Format (FDD 616).
• Audiovisual: CAF, Apple Core Audio Format (FDD 591); USAC, Unified Speech and Audio Coding (FDD 606); ADM, Audio Definition Model (FDD 607); NSV, Nullsoft Streaming Video (FDD 608); SIB, Sibelius Music Notation Format (FDD 609); IMF_Package, Interoperable Master Format (FDD 535); AV1, AOMedia Video 1 Video Encoding (FDD 541); MXF_RDD48, MXF Archive and Preservation Format Registered Disclosure Document (SMPTE RDD 48) (FDD 543); MXF_GC_FFV1, MXF Generic Container Mapped to FFV1 Encoding (SMPTE RDD 48 Amd 1) (FDD 544); and SWF_Family, Flash SWF File Format Family (FDD 629).
• 3D, VR and animation: 3DM, 3D Model File Format Family (FDD 601); VRML, Virtual Reality Modeling Language Family (FDD 602); XYZ, XYZ Point Cloud (FDD 617); DGN, MicroStation DGN Family (FDD 603); MA, Maya ASCII Scene File Format (FDD 604); and MB, Maya Binary Scene File Format (FDD 605).
• Imaging: DNG_1_6, Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) Version 1.6 (FDD 628) and AVIF, AV1 Image File Format (FDD 540).
• Forensics and disc imaging: Stream, KryoFlux Stream File (FDD 610); DFXML, Digital Forensics XML (FDD 611); MOOF, MOOF Disk Image (FDD 612); and HFE, HxC Floppy Emulator File Format (FDD 613).
• Miscellaneous: Apple_Fork, AppleDouble Resource Fork (FDD 625); Lyrx, ArcGIS Layer File (FDD 626); PEF, Portable Embosser Format (FDD 624); and CDX_Index, CDX Internet Archive Index File (FDD 590).

You can follow along at home with our progress on our workplan page as well as the regularly updated publication log. We’ve also published the draft workplan for the coming year if you want a sneak peak. This one is still very much in flux because we have no external contract support so it’s just us LC chickens on the FDD writing and updating duty again.

If you are curious about how and why we research the formats we do, read a refresher on our first post, Fun with File Formats. There’s a method to the madness but the gist is that we focus on formats that are of interest to the Library of Congress because we have them in our collections, such as those listed in the Recommended Formats Statement (more on the RFS below), or we will be adding them to our collections. Another path is that we encounter a format in the wild and want to learn about it in preparation for seeing it in our collections.

Documenting Digital Accessibility Features

Alongside these new format entries, we’ve also started a project related to the yearly update of the Recommended Formats Statement (RFS) to document digital accessibility features in order to help RFS Content Teams determine if a format is preferred or acceptable under the RFS guidance.

The key questions we sought to answer about digital accessibility include:

• Does this format support digital accessibility features such as those described in the W3C Accessibility Principles? For example:
  • Text alternatives for non-text content (such as alt, or alternative, text)
  • Captions and other alternatives for multimedia (and subtitles)
  • Can text content be structured (as in XML) or tagged (as in PDF) for screen readers?
  • Are dataset formats well-structured with page regions and headings identified, tagged or marked up content permitted, tables navigable for a screen reader and forms that can validate entries?
• In what way are accessibility features implemented in the format? Such as:
  • Are there specific metadata tags to indicate accessibility features such as alt text, captions, transcripts and the like?
  • Are embedded closed captions supported?
  • Does the file rely on external data, such as a WebVTT file for caption data?

See the entry for WAVE Audio File Format (FDD001 – the very first FDD ever written!) which states:

Accessibility Features

WAVE files have moderate support for accessibility features. Closed captions and transcriptions can be embedded within the Labeled Text chunk (ltxt) [within the Associated Data Chunk] and identified as such with the ‘Purpose’ label. The specification includes the suggested Purpose value of ‘capt’ for closed-caption text and FADGI defines, in Guidelines for Embedding Metadata in Broadcast WAVE Files, the Purpose value of ‘tran’ for transcription. Overall, the optional Associated Data Chunk field allows a mechanism to provide context for the audio data along the timeline which is helpful, but it is not expressly designed for accessibility impacts.

In common practice, typically WAVE and other audio file content is supported by external caption and subtitle formats such as WebVTT. See W3C’s Making Audio and Video Media Accessible for more general information about accessible sound and moving image media.

This information is reported as part of Self Documentation, one of the seven sustainability factors. Each entry is prefaced with the Accessibility Features header in bold to make it easier to identify the information consistently on the page. It’s important to note that the RFS does not require these accessibility features to be enabled for a format, but our additions provide information on the capacity for the format to support these features.

We’ve defined the following levels of accessibility support for a format:

• Unknown or not applicable: This term is used if there is no support identified in the specifications/resources or if unknown.
• Limited: This term is used if there might be some very basic capability.
• Moderate: This term is used if there is some support but perhaps not explicitly designed for accessibility or not actually used.
• Good: This term is used if there are dedicated components in the file that support accessibility features, such as embedded metadata to label content, tagged text for reading order and structure for screen readers (such as in text files) or caption/subtitle/timecode/transcription options in AV wrappers.

The RFS Content Teams use the FDDs in their deliberations about preferences for the format as either “preferred” or “acceptable.” There are over 70 preferred formats listed in the RFS across all content categories, so we are tackling those first and we’ll get to the acceptable formats later. We also have plans to get wider community input on what information we’ve documented. While there’s a ways to go to organize and prettify this data as a compiled draft set, we’ve compiled it into a XLSX file in the interim so we can start to share and get feedback as we continue to refine our processes. Let us know what would be helpful to the community for this effort.

What’s Up Next

Your favorite Formats fam have lots in store for the next six months. We have a paper at iPres 2024 with colleagues from the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) about File Format Risk Assessment in Two U.S. Government Contexts, lots more FDDs to write, we’re thinking of updating our XML schema to accommodate some recent changes in how and what data we document (reminder that you can download all or part of our FDDs in XML!), and of course, continuing to refine our digital accessibility features work.

And of course, we love to hear from our users. All 170,272 unique visitors across six continents (come on Antarctica folks – complete the map and make some format nerds very happy!) since our last post in December 2023. As we say in many of our FDDs, comments welcome! Please drop us a note here or to formats@loc.gov.

The explosion of interest surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI) will clearly have a tremendous impact on the world of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM). The Library of Congress is exploring how certain AI use cases can help expand access to our collection, enhance services for users, and improve efficiency. We are still in the early days of understanding this technology and must develop policy, guidelines, and best practices to guide the international GLAM community toward a sustainable future.

As we explore the future of AI, the Library is taking a leadership role among cultural organizations through AI4LAM (Artificial Intelligence for Libraries, Archives & Museums). This volunteer-run organization cultivates “a collaborative framework for libraries, archives and museums to organize, share and elevate their knowledge about and use of artificial intelligence.” AI4LAM is open to all institutions and interested persons. As the organizational mission states, “Individually we are slow and isolated; collectively we can go faster and farther.”

Since its inception in 2018, AI4LAM has steadily grown its membership, forming a Secretariat in 2019 that coordinates and supports community activity. The Secretariat currently consists of seven organizations, including the Library of Congress, National Library of Norway, Stanford University Libraries, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ecole nationale des chartes, Smithsonian Institution, and the British Library. The Library of Congress and the Smithsonian currently serve as co-chairs. Community / Working Groups allow stakeholders from across institutions to share information and work collaboratively on matters such as metadata, teaching and learning, and named entity recognition. Individual Chapters are regional networks within AI4LAM, such as the Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Chapters and Chapitre francophone (French-speaking Chapter), that collaborate on common goals.

AI4LAM kicked off with its first conference, Fantastic Futures, in late 2018 with the National Library of Norway as host. Since then, this conference has been hosted annually and brings together a global community of GLAM professionals to address the most pressing issues. To illustrate the point, here is a list of the primary topics for Fantastic Futures Canberra 2024:

• How do we sustain and build on our capacity to collaborate as a community?
• What are the resourcing implications of using or developing AI to preserve and make accessible GLAM (gallery, library, archive, museum) collections (as data) using AI?
• What does operationalising AI with GLAM collections mean in real terms?
• How do we build CARE and FAIR principles into GLAM work practice?

You can also view previous community calls that stretch back to April 2020, covering topics such as Chat-GPT, content generative models, content discovery enhancement, and AI policy.

Interested in learning more? Consider joining the next open community call: July 16, 2024.

Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’ digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates.

---

What’s new on loc.gov?

A few collections updates

The Occupational Folklife Project now includes Tillamook – Cheesemakers in Coastal Oregon (below) and African American Nurses: The Chi Eta Phi Sorority, both recipients of a 2021 Archie Green Fellowship from the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress. AFC established the Archie Green fellowship program in 2010 to support the documentation of occupational folklife in contemporary America. Thousands of oral histories, photographs, and fieldnotes generated through original fieldwork are now on loc.gov thanks to this program – read more about the fellowship program here.

To learn even more about these projects, check out the New Occupational Folklife Project Documents African American Nurses and the Chi Eta Phi Sorority interview on the AFC blog and explore more Tillamook images and audio recordings on loc.gov. And congratulations to the American Folklife Center: the “African American Nurses: The Chi Eta Phi Sorority” collection was the 50th Occupational Folklife Project to be posted online!

New Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available for Panama (4,800 issues of the Gaceta oficial, from 1977-2005) and Rwanda (175 issues of Igazeti ya leta ya Repubulika y’u Rwanda, from 2017-2020).

Also newly available is the initial release of 220 papers from the National Bureau of Economic Research. More papers will be made available on loc.gov in the future.

New crowdsourced transcriptions

Since our last edition, the By the People crowdsourced transcription program has returned the transcriptions for the By Design: Frederick Law Olmsted & Associates campaign to their original digital collection on loc.gov. You can now search the Frederick Law Olmsted Papers using volunteer-created transcriptions and view images side-by-side with their transcribed text – see below!

As you may know, By the People has also published 23 full-text datasets of completed transcription campaigns – including a brand new version of the Civil War Soldiers: ‘Disabled but not disheartened’ campaign. This spring, we also released a new way to explore and interact with these datasets, and we hope you’ll find it useful! Check out this Signal blog post from Madeline Goebel, who walks you through the new tool designed for anyone who may feel “simultaneously excited about these datasets, but unsure where to start!”

What’s new onsite via Stacks?

New items are added every week into stacks.loc.gov – the Library’s primary onsite platform for accessing restricted digital content. To learn more about Stacks, check out this video from our team: Access the Digital Stacks On-Site at the Library of Congress!

Recent highlights from Stacks include St. Marks poetry recordings and readings, two new map collections (the Ethel Fair Collection and the Muriel Parry Map Collection), and state government reports from New York and South Carolina. And some seasonal additions to Stacks include Pride month, LGBTQ rights and activism, Women in the Olympics, The official commemorative map collection: Atlanta 1996, and Let’s celebrate Emancipation Day & Juneteenth.

Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.

Updates from the Web Archives

Since our last newsletter, the Web Archiving Section released 536 new records on loc.gov, while continuing to work on infrastructure upgrades that will improve access to all of our collections.

In addition, two web archive collections have been described and made more discoverable to users. The Kosovo Political and Social Issues Web Archive (below) and the Montenegrin Political and Social Issues Web Archive both preserve content that address political and social issues and inform public policy in their respective countries.

Content includes websites of political parties, nongovernmental organizations, voluntary associations, and think tanks. The selection of websites represents a diversity of organizations from a vast array of political stances and viewpoints on topics such as the development of civil society, liberal democracy, peace-building, corruption, economic inequality, human and minority rights, marginalization of certain groups, and freedom of the press.

Additional captures will be added to these web archives as more content exits the one-year embargo.

---

*featured image citation: Baumgartner, D. F. & Occupational Folklife Project, S., Schmidt, J. L., photographer. (2022) Dale Baumgartner second interview conducted by Jared L. Schmidt. Image: “In foreground – baby loaf of Tillamook cheddar top form, hoop behind slightly out of focus.“

Today’s guest post is from Kate Murray, a Digital Projects Coordinator in Digital Collections Management and Services, and Charlie Hosale, an Archivist in the American Folklife Center, both from the Library of Congress.

---

The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) AudioVisual Working Group has been hard at work since our last meeting recap from spring 2023 when we met for the first time in-person since the pandemic began. FADGI meetings are really where our ethos of being a “cooperative and collaborative” group shines through. Audio not working on the Zoom? Someone can fix that. Need an outlet before your laptop dies while you are screensharing? Here, take this one. Can you do a presentation about this complex project on short notice? Yep, and with slides. Perhaps our favorite part is welcoming FADGI first timers – they are greeted with a heartfelt round of applause and a warm reception. And maybe an assignment for a project…

FADGI Meetings in the Wild

To catch you up since our last post, we’ve returned to our typical schedule of two hybrid meetings a year with lots of virtual working subgroup meetings as needed. In October 2023, we visited the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center for a tour of those amazing facilities before our meeting. And in April 2024, we had a lovely day out for ourselves with a trip to the Smithsonian Library and Archives’ new Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) digitization and processing space, working meeting and even BYO lunch on their rooftop deck. With over 35 people in person and another 25 attending virtually, the meeting included representatives from across the Library of Congress as well as the FBI, National Library of Medicine, Architect of the Capital, various Smithsonian Institutions including the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian’s Library and Archives, and OCIO among many others. We are already planning our next one for the fall and we’ll likely be back at the mothership, the Library of Congress, for a joint meeting with our pals in the FADGI Still Image Working Group.

Our agenda for the spring 2024 meeting was packed as usual. We had a few big announcements including the publication of two new guidelines open for public comment. The official deadline for comments has passed but, honestly, we welcome feedback at any time to feddigitization@loc.gov.

New Guidelines Published

Guidelines for IRENE System Products for Long Term Retention: Deliverable Packages for Imaged Audio Systems defines the final package for audio content digitized through an imaged audio system. These are the files resultant at the end of the process, often handed off to the client. This document does not cover all files created or used during the process but rather the final results which should be maintained for the long term. While much of this guideline is specific to the Project IRENE (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.) system, the guideline can be applicable to other imaged audio systems as well. Some of the highlights of this guideline include using BigTIFF as the primary preservation file, defining a set of TIFF tags for project use and suggestions for bundling the delivered package as ZIP, tar or BagIt bags for system ingest. Full details about the project, including project participants, are available at the project homepage.

Guidelines for Embedding Metadata in WebVTT Files defines guidelines for embedding metadata in headers of WebVTT files, also known as the Web Video Text Tracks Format, for the carriage of caption and timecode data. The WebVTT format is standardized by W3C and is a time-indexed, text-based file format that is intended for marking up external text track resources in connection with the HTML track element, specifically HTML 5. This project, led by Charlie Hosale on behalf of the FADGI Accessibility Subgroup, recognizes that provenance, administrative history, and contextual information are often lacking from WebVTT captions, subtitles, and descriptive audio files. Inspired by past recommendations for DPX and BWF metadata, FADGI established this simple set of metadata for WebVTT files. The fields and values help patrons and collection administrators understand what kind of data a WebVTT contains, from where it came, and when, where, and how it was made. Full details about the project, including project participants, are available at the project homepage.

A reminder that as always, FADGI guidelines are available free of charge and carry a CC0 1.0 Universal license for worldwide use and reuse. FADGI thanks all the project contributors and welcomes comments from the community.

Open-source Software Support

We also discussed other recent work including FADGI sponsored work for open-source software development and maintenance for BWF MetaEdit, FFmpeg and vrecord. FADGI had been supporting BWF MetaEdit and related FFmpeg work for a few years but starting in 2024, we are adding vrecord to the mix. We have a few specific areas of focus but a priority for vrecord is to add support for concurrent proxy creation (especially but not limited to creating MP4 files concurrently while it is creating FFV1/MKV files). Also new this year is a focus on transparency and community engagement through tracking work on the respective GitHub Issue Trackers for each project with a “FADGI” label to indicate which issues FADGI is sponsoring and funding. You can follow along at home at the following GitHub Issue Trackers for vrecord, BWF MetaEdit and FFmpeg (full disclosure that the FFmpeg tracker is a local instance hosted by our friends at MediaArea while they engage with the wider FFmpeg community).

We had a demo of new accessibility features in embARC from the Software Accessibility for Open Source Digital Preservation Applications project. We are just thrilled with the impact and outcomes from this research work and seeing the real-world adjustments incorporated into embARC is really gratifying. You can keep track of our continued work on embARC’s GitHub Issue Tracker.

Yes, and …

We’re in the early stages of revising the Digitizing Motion Picture Film: Exploration of the Issues and Sample SOW which was last updated in 2016 so, yeah, it’s time. The high-level goal for the 2024 FADGI Film Digitization Guidelines Project is to document detailed descriptions of film digitization workflows for both preservation and access. The core section of the Guidelines will be a set of tables that depict the preservation and access digitization workflows as a sequence of decisions a user may make when planning and executing a digitization project. Generally, the Guidelines will break down film digitization workflows into three aspects: inputs, or the source films to be digitized; the actions that make up the digitization process; and outputs, or the resulting files. Much more on this project to come as the details get worked out. The 2024 FADGI Film Digitization Guidelines Project is led by Brett Scheuermann and Criss Austin from NARA.

Finally, we have decided it’s time to revisit some of our earlier work regarding born digital video, especially the DRAFT Significant Properties for Digital Video (notice the all caps for the word DRAFT – this is not a typo but rather an indication of its state of incompleteness at the moment) as well as Creating and Archiving Born Digital Video (which was Kate’s very first leadership project for FADGI a full decade ago!). Born digital video is a hot topic so the time is right for us to reexamine and revise these works as needed, and maybe even add some new resources to fill in community-identified gaps. We’ll keep you posted as these projects develop.

While active participation in FADGI is limited to staff at US federal agencies as well as selected contractors and partners for specific projects, we welcome feedback on all our work. Drop a comment here or send us a note. #fadgi4eva!

I’m excited to share this interview with Amanda Lehman, a Digital Collections Specialist in the Web Archiving Section at the Library. This interview, and others like it on The Signal, are created to generate insight into the background, experience, and interests of the people that support the Library of Congress.

Tracee: Hi Amanda, could you tell us a bit about what you do in the Web Archiving (WA) Section? How would you explain your job to someone outside the Library of Congress? What do you like most about your job?  

Amanda: As a Digital Collection Specialist, I provide technical support for the capture, management, and processing of web archives. Our aim in the Library of Congress WA section is to preserve and share selected websites that are representative of a user’s experience of that part of the current internet. I do not choose what to archive, instead I work collaboratively to tend the data captured and delivered by vendor-supported web crawling software. We process and deliver web archive data for preservation. We work towards institutional goals by understanding and improving our highly complex web archives.  

After 3 years working at the Library, I have built on a passion for untangling digital knots and developed expertise in evaluating web content for archival purposes. In a team environment using Agile project management (see WAT Goes Agile), I can focus my attention on following and advancing shared workflows by choosing among “endless ways to manage ourselves and the data.” Also, we work with our data to measure progress and continually assess, improve, and automate our work.  

Tracee: Can you tell us a bit about your professional background and journey. In particular, what professional or educational experiences prepared you for your role?  

Amanda:  I have journeyed from the Rocky Mountain West to the Creole South, and now to sub-tropical Mid-Atlantic where I’ve discovered life and love. Along the way, I was drawn to learning about human communication and social structures through literature and language, graduating with a BA in English and French from the University of Wyoming (UWyo). I stayed there for a few years working for family doing office and manual labor, in a call center, and as a legal assistant… and playing in the mountains.  

From 2011-2013, I lived in Baton Rouge, Louisiana to gain my Masters of Library and Information Science from LSU’s School of Library and Information Science. Once I graduated and climbed back towards my beloved Colorado & Wyoming spaces, I returned to part-time work at the largest regional collection of plant specimens, the Rocky Mountain Herbarium. I soon began contract work with the UWyo Libraries Digital Collections, and eventually became a Digital Collections Specialist (note the single letter difference compared to my current title above, big change, small world).  

In 2019, it was my privilege to administer the first grant at our university for the official National Digital Newspaper Program for the State of Wyoming. Luckily, that grant work helped sustain us through the tumult of 2020, as we collaborated with amazing colleagues in our library and representatives from around the state. This and other experience working with smaller memory institutions in Wyoming brought perspective to my own career goals: information may be limitless but resources are not. Joining the Library of Congress struck me as an opportunity to make the most of 2021. 

Tracee: Could you tell us about any specific project or activity you have been able to work on that you are particularly proud of?  

Amanda: I am proud of a project which collected internal and external data about the largest seeds in web archives. After searching, redefining “large” in context, and a lot of learning, we asked colleagues in the International Internet Preservation Consortium (IIPC) how they define and work to preserve large, complex websites. In collaboration with the internal data source group our project elucidated a few of our unbounded issues such as the growth and proliferation of digital content that web preservation wants to capture. The largest seeds project laid the groundwork for future efforts focusing on outreach and enriching conversations about web archiving. 

Tracee: In 2019, our division worked up a set of nine values that guide our work on Digital Content Management. Do any of those values resonate with you? If so which ones and why? 

Amanda:  My key value is safety. Since youth, my love of learning has often depended on safety and trust. We establish safety in various ways – with consistent equity and inclusion, along with fearless communication. I have learned to ask, how can I (or we) sustain the work that is needed? To answer, I appreciate the structure that the other guiding values provide, especially collaboration and care. With different skills we navigate complex problems in stewarding and sharing data. In this environment I can make mistakes, take risks, share ideas and challenges, and then go learn more and try again anew. 

Tracee:  Do you have any advice for people interested in getting into the kind of work you do? Are there any skills or competencies that you think are really important for folks that want to get into this field to develop? What do you think is the biggest thing you’ve learned so far in working at the Library of Congress?  

Amanda:  Take your DEIA training seriously. Study accessibility and jump into (coding) projects if you enjoy them! Fundamental to accessibility concepts is an open mind about ableism. Without these competencies I would never have realized how much work goes into making safe spaces and making others, let alone myself, feel safe. I recently completed a DEIA training that encouraged bystanders to become allies only after some very important steps: most poignantly for me, introspection. If one plans to intervene in unsafe places, and if we intended to foster safety in more places, it only makes sense that we must work to know what safety means for ourselves.  

In the past year I realized a few of the obstacles to my understanding of safety, including undiagnosed autism ♾. But that is a conversation for another forum. Anyway, if you can find the subject matter that helps you focus, widen your communication skills, and recognize bias – these are fundamentally important to collaborative work.  

Tracee: Aside from work, what sorts of things are you passionate about? Do you have any hobbies or interests that you’re up for sharing out with folks? 

Amanda:  I find joy in martial arts and naturalist pursuits (gardening, walking, observing wildlife). While my fitness has evolved with health changes in my 30s, I practiced Kung Fu as a teen, and now I am a blue belt in Taiji.  

Please join us as we conclude the Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud (CCHC) grant, awarded to the Library of Congress in 2019 by the Mellon Foundation.

At the event, we will describe the lessons of the grant, designed to help us investigate a model for enabling discovery, investigation, and visualization of Library materials in new and innovative ways. We’ll also share two new outcomes of the grant:

• A colorful new comic created by Jer Thorp and Jonathan Ashley that explores the exciting and complex world of collections as data.
• The redesigned data.labs.loc.gov, where we will begin sharing Library of Congress’ free-to-use exploratory data packages, a data publishing format that combines normalized metadata, metadata enrichments, media files, standardized documentation, narrative context, and code samples.

CCHC has allowed the Library’s Digital Innovation Division (LC Labs) to take a significant leap forward in facilitating computational research with Library materials and creating a long-lasting foundation for this work to continue. We hope you’ll join us!

Jun 21, 2024 12:00 PM – 1:30PM EDT on Zoom

Register for this event

In honor of Asian / Pacific American Heritage Month, Library of Congress 2023-2024 Innovator in Residence Jeffrey Yoo Warren invites the public to experience hidden portals to five historic Asian American communities created with Library of Congress collections for the month of May. Portals are accessible by mobile device at original sites around the country and on the Library of Congress campus in Washington, DC.

If you’ve been following this project on The Signal, then you know Jeff and local Asian American artists have been collaborating on virtual reconstructions of sites such as the Chinese Vegetable Gardens in Portland, Oregon, China Alley in Hanford, California, and Empire Street Chinatown where Jeff lives in Providence, RI.

These sites – as well as two additional ones featuring historic Asian American communities in Truckee, CA and Riverside, CA – have been rendered into 360 degree immersive photospheres and dropped in place via GPS onto designated public sites within a 30 ft. by 30 ft. square in the following locations:

• Providence, Rhode Island on Empire Street between Washington Street & Chapel Street
• Portland, Oregon on SW 18th Avenue between SW Madison Street & SW Salmon Street
• Hanford, California on China Aly between N Green Street & N White Street
• Truckee, California at Donner Pass Road & Spring Street
• Riverside, California at Cottage Street & Commerce Street
• 5 places on the Library of Congress campus in Washington, DC

The Hidden Portals website provides pictures of each location as it appears today, and integrates to your preferred map app for directions if you’d like to visit. As you approach with the Hidden Portals site open on your phone, the portal will appear accompanied by an ambient soundtrack. You can tap to see a larger view, listen to Jeff’s accompanying narration, and move your phone to explore the full scene. As you leave the area, the portal will close behind you.

If you are able to visit portals on the Library’s campus in DC, make sure you don’t miss the Geography and Map Division location!! After experiencing the portal in the Globe foyer of the James Madison building, visitors can stop by the reference desk during reading room hours to see some of the Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps Jeff used to create the reconstructions and ask questions to the friendly staff there.

See the Hidden Portals site for more information on the experimental experience and the communities honored. And if you’re interested in doing this type of research or reconstruction work yourself, be sure to check out Jeff’s relational reconstruction toolkit.

Interested in learning more about what’s new in the Library of Congress’ digital collections? The Signal shares updates on new additions to our digital collections and we love showing off all the hard work of our colleagues from across the Library. Read on for a sample of what’s been added recently and some of our favorite highlights. Click here for all previous updates.

---

What’s new on loc.gov?

 

Pacific Encounters in 19th Century Japan

The initial release of this digital collection features rare materials at the Library of Congress that document early Japanese interactions with the United States and countries in Europe, namely Britain, France, Netherlands, and Russia. The Perry Expedition of 1853-54 figures prominently in many of these materials. Led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry (1794-1858), this expedition set out to establish diplomatic ties between the United States and Japan, a goal achieved with the signing of the US-Japan Treaty of Peace and Amity on March 31, 1854. Contemporary Japanese observers documented the expedition’s visit through a variety of media, including books, scrolls, and woodblock prints. They were particularly fascinated by the imposing presence of the “black ships” they spotted off the coast, some of which were powered by coal-burning steam engines. Within the collection are multiple examples of richly illustrated “Black Ship scrolls,” a genre that emerged from this period.

South Asian Digital Collection

This online collection brings together both newly-scanned and previously-released digital content, and features approximately 900 books, serials, and manuscripts related to the present-day countries of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. It includes items in South Asian languages (e.g., Bengali, Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Urdu), as well as items relevant to South Asia in English, French, German, and other languages. You will find materials about colonialism in South Asia, vernacular literature, religion and philosophy, grammar and linguistics, the rebellion of 1857, American and European accounts of travel in colonial India, and many other subjects in the broad field of South Asian studies.

South Asian Ephemera Collection Indexes

This is a set of PDF indexes compiled by the Library of Congress Office, New Delhi, and scanned from microfiche to complement the South Asian Women’s Serials LibGuide. It contains about 2,000 indexes arranged by publisher and title, or content lists arranged alphabetically by theme or form of publication. The ephemeral materials documented include pamphlets, booklets, and issues of newspapers, newsletters, and magazines on a wide variety of subjects, such as government and politics, arts and society, forest conservation, and library science.

A few collections updates

In celebration of National Poetry Month, the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature was updated with 27 new items. These newly released recordings span five decades, from the 1950s-2000s, and feature writers reading, giving talks, and participating in panels at the Library’s Capitol Hill campus. Highlights from this collection include Maya Angelou reading from her work in the Coolidge Auditorium (1984) and Lucille Clifton reading her poems in the Montpelier Room (2002).

The Confederate States of America Records online collection has been updated to include oversize materials and other additions to the collection. These include autographs, blank forms, bonds, and an 1862 list of items purchased from quartermaster general’s requisition book on reverse of a wallpaper fragment (see below).

The National Screening Room has been updated with new captures for approximately 600 films. Previously digitized in the late 1990s, these include early motion pictures from the Edison Companies, documentation of the Spanish-American War and other diplomatic events, and a glimpse into life in New York and San Francisco at the turn of the last century.

New Foreign Legal Gazettes are now available for Argentina (3,295 issues of Boletín oficial de la República Argentina, from 1952-1979) and Chile (3,115 issues of Diario oficial de la República de Chile, from 1976-2011.)

The Military Legal Resources collection now includes 2021-2023 issues of Military Law Review, The Army Lawyer, Operational Law Handbook, and other recent deskbooks, handbooks, and training manuals from the William Winthrop Memorial Library at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Legal Center and School in Charlottesville, Virginia.

New African American newspapers available in Chronicling America

We are excited to announce that as of March 1, 2024, all new Chronicling America batches will only be ingested to loc.gov and not to the legacy website (you can read more about that here). All recent batches can be found on a new research guide page, Recent Additions to Chronicling America. Between March and April, we received digitized newspapers from Arizona, Alabama, Maine, Minnesota, and New Hampshire.

The Library of Congress also uploaded new African American newspapers from the following titles:

The Advocate (Leavenworth, KS)	The Leavenworth Advocate (Leavenworth, KS)d	The Topeka Call (Topeka, KS)
The American Citizen (Topeka, KS)	The Leavenworth Herald (Leavenworth, KS)	The Topeka Tribune (Topeka, KS)
The Colored Citizen (Topeka, KS)	The National Reflector (Wichita, KS)	The Weekly Call (Topeka, KS)
Colored Citizen (Fort Scott, KS)	The Plaindealer (Detroit, MI)	Western Christian Recorder (Kansas City, KS)d
Daily American Citizen (Kansas City, KS)d	The State Ledger (Topeka, KS)	The Wichita Searchlight (Wichita, KS)
The Gazette (Cleveland, OH)	The Times-Observer (Topeka, KS)

 

New crowdsourced transcriptions

Since our last edition, the By the People crowdsourced transcription program has returned nearly 160,000 transcriptions back to their digital collections on loc.gov. These transcriptions come from the Blackwells: An Extraordinary Family, Rough Rider to Bull Moose: Letters to Theodore Roosevelt, and Anna E. Dickinson Papers campaigns. Click on the following links to go directly to their collections in loc.gov, now powered By the People.

• Search Blackwell Family Papers with transcriptions
• Seach Teddy Roosevelt with transcriptions
• Search Anna E. Dickinson Papers with transcriptions

As you may know, By the People has also published 19 full-text datasets of completed transcription campaigns. We’ve just released a brand-new way to explore and interact with these datasets, and we hope you’ll find it useful! Check out this Signal blog post from our colleague Madeline Goebel, who says the tool is for anyone “simultaneously excited about these datasets, but unsure where to start!”

What’s new onsite via Stacks?

New items are added every week into stacks.loc.gov – the Library’s primary onsite platform for accessing restricted digital content. To learn more about Stacks, check out this video from our team: Access the Digital Stacks On-Site at the Library of Congress!

Recent highlights from Stacks include two Korean diaspora films (Jeronimo and Chosen), the addition of new reels of the microfilm newspaper ABC Color, and the Teen guide to the supernatural. And some seasonal additions to Stacks include G.O.A.T. baseball teams, A people’s history of baseball, The big dance: the story of the NCAA basketball tournament, NCAA basketball championship, Solar eclipses, Sky gazing: a guide to the moon, sun, planets, stars, eclipses, constellations.

Please reach out to a librarian at ask.loc.gov with questions about accessing these materials using Stacks.

---

*featured image citation: Mīr Ḥasan, Mas̲navī Siḥr Al-Bayān. South Asian Rare Book Collection and John Davis Batchelder Collection. [India: publisher not identified, 1890].

Today’s guest post is from Madeline Goebel, a Digital Collections Specialist at the Library of Congress.

---

As a reader of the Signal, you may already be familiar with By the People, the Library of Congress’s crowdsourcing program that allows volunteers to transcribe, review, and tag digitized pages from the Library’s collections. Further, you may already know that, once completed, those transcriptions are released to the Library’s website, where they help make items more accessible and discoverable. However, were you aware that in addition to those transcriptions, By the People also produces and releases datasets of completed transcriptions to the Library’s website?

To date, there are 19 By the People datasets in the Selected Datasets Collection, and that number will continue to grow as more transcription campaigns are completed by volunteers. Each available dataset package consists of a .CSV file containing data exported from Concordia (the software behind By the People) and a README with information about the transcription campaign and the structure of the dataset. The .CSV file includes all the transcriptions and tags that were created by volunteers, opening up the possibility for computational research across collections with By the People transcriptions.

If you are now feeling simultaneously excited about these datasets, but unsure where to start, we have just the resource for you! Library staff have created a Python tutorial for using By the People datasets from four campaigns with materials related to the women’s suffrage movement (from the Susan B. Anthony Papers, Carrie Chapman Catt Papers, Elizabeth Cady Stanton Papers, and Mary Church Terrell Papers) to experiment with Natural Language Processing and create simple visualizations. The tutorial is organized in a series of Jupyter Notebooks (the notebooks, themselves are available through GitHub) that use the spaCy Python library to break down and analyze the transcriptions using Natural Language Processing techniques. There are two visualizations: the first charts word frequency for each dataset, and the second charts word frequency for the speeches in the Susan B. Anthony papers (see below).

The code utilizes these four datasets, but could be applied to other By the People datasets as well. Additionally, the data processing techniques presented in this tutorial could be used as a starting point for other visualizations or analytical work. For further inspiration, you can look to students at the University of Michigan School of Information who experimented with data from the Branch Rickey papers. For a more advanced project, or just to interact with the Mary Church Terrell transcriptions in an engaging and exciting way, you should also check out the At the table with: Mary Church Terrell project, created by Library staff and interns. We look forward to seeing what you can learn and create!

Today’s guest post is from Genevieve Havemeyer-King, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Collections Management and Services Division.

---

“Development is maintenance.” Brian Marick, “Agile Manifesto” co-author

This year marks the fifth anniversary of the Digital Collections Management Compendium’s public debut on loc.gov. The Digital Collections Management and Services Division officially launched the Compendium via The Signal in 2019 after initiating the project in 2017. Emerging as part of a larger effort (PDF) to take stock of the Library’s digital collections, this release was the culmination of two years of gathering, drafting, and centralizing documentation on how we preserve and provide access to digital content. The Compendium now serves as the public face of a formal program that evolves to address the unique needs of stakeholders within the digital landscape. As we enter a new year, we wanted to take the opportunity to share a status update and highlight the ongoing work of ensuring the Compendium continues to support the Library’s Strategic Goals by guiding how we sustain access to knowledge and creativity, provide trustworthy and authoritative data through peer-reviewed policies, and enhance our staff’s digital collection management capabilities through experimentation and skill sharing.

The numbers don’t lie

While the public version of the Compendium is a resource to loc.gov visitors and practitioners in the field, an internal version provides Library of Congress staff more detailed guidance on specific organizational systems and workflows and is crucial to Library work. A peek at our internal usage statistics gives an impression of the Library’s digital landscape. Since their launch in 2017, the internal pages have received nearly 16,000 page views, with over 11,000 since the 2019 public announcement on loc.gov.

The most visited internal page, titled Use of Approved Inventory Systems (public version available at this link), describes the Library’s approved systems and requirements for inventorying and establishing administrative control for the Library’s permanent digital collections, which is top of mind as we prioritize enhancement of systems used for safeguarding our digital collections. Nearly as popular is our page on Processing Digital Collections Content (public version available at this link), which defines criteria and levels of processing for digital content. In 2021, this item provided important guidance in the development of digital access workflows (PDF) for recordings within the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature and the PALABRA Archive.

Another highlight of our analytics shows heavy usage of Digital Collections Management Compendium Governance and Maintenance (an internal-only entry), which defines the responsibilities of the Digital Collections Management Compendium Review Group, who represent the foundation of our Compendium program maintenance process.

The popularity of these three pages may reflect the importance or complexity of these three core activities in digital collection management: inventory, processing, and policy development. Repeated visits to the Governance and Maintenance page speaks to how the work of policy documentation is a never-ending process that is key to digital collections management.

Maintaining the Compendium: the review process

Beyond page views, the impact of the Compendium can be seen in how staff point to it in support of decisions or directions within the digital content lifecycle. As a peer-reviewed resource, the Compendium allows staff to more effectively advocate for change or enhancements related to services. When the policies themselves need to change, guidance elements are brought up for review to determine if they align with new tools or methodologies that are under consideration.

Much of the Compendium’s strength lies in this review process, which ensures that it remains a living document. Digital Collections Management and Services (DCMS) has succeeded in maintaining both public and internal versions by coordinating with stakeholders across the Library. In depth discussion of each piece of guidance allows for the documentation to capture nuances within the complex work of migrating, preserving, and providing access to born digital and digitized collections content. Additional resources, such as our Compendium Glossary (which also exists as an internal version), facilitate this process by aligning terminology for stakeholders who come to the Compendium with diverse technical backgrounds and perspectives to ensure a mutual understanding of terms across the digital content management lifecycle.

This maintenance work is coordinated by a small team of DCMS staff who review and track revisions, schedule review periods, perform administrative updates, reach out to subject matter experts, recruit new review members, and keep a pulse on changes within the Library or in the field that may warrant updates. The editorial work of reviewing and collaborating on changes falls to the Compendium Review Group. With representatives from the Library Collections & Services Group (LCSG), the Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO), Office of the Librarian, Congressional Research Service (CRS), the Office of General Counsel (OGC), and the U.S. Copyright Office, the Review Group ensures that each item within the Compendium aligns with formal Library of Congress Regulations & Directives and departmental and community-wide best practices.

Some challenges to maintenance include working around more immediate priorities (like collection processing!) and striking a balance between the needs of so many divisions and diverse digital collection types. At the 2021 iPres International Conference on Digital Preservation, the team presented a paper detailing the 2019 launch of the Compendium (PDF) , concluding that “…the ongoing maintenance and revision of the DCMC is a core part of efforts to improve our approach to digital collections management,” and that statement remains true. Digital collection management is a lifelong process that requires adaptability and ongoing conversation, and the Compendium provides a wonderful platform for exchanging ideas within such a large institution as we collaborate to analyze collection issues and risks, weigh resources, and craft language that defines our daily work.

Building on community
Creating a community of shared practice and documentation for digital collection management starts by sharing knowledge and publicizing the Compendium. Our team has carried out this internal dissemination through an internal listserv and a monthly virtual event series called Digital Library Practitioners. The meeting sessions are informed by staff activities and cover a range of topics. We’ve had about 50 meetings since the series started, and more recently we heard from colleagues about their work on the Mellon funded Computing Cultural Heritage in the Cloud (CCHC) initiative, investigations into artificial intelligence, and automation tools for increasing productivity, to name a few. These events provide a venue for analyzing workflows through the lens of the Compendium to see how this resource is guiding or informing our processes, allow us to share communications about the Compendium and keep up on one another’s work, and help reveal topics for which we might want to explore creation of new guidance.

In refining guidance, we gain a deeper understanding of how Library staff use and reference the Compendium. Since we’re also interested in how documentation and policy development might be approached differently, we’d love to hear from other institutions. How do you maintain your internal documents and collaborate with internal partners? What platforms have you worked with and what has inspired change over the years? Share in the comments!

The following is a guest post by Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Jeffrey Yoo Warren in conversation with interdisciplinary artist and filmmaker Evelyn Hang Yin. “Relational reconstructions” are a creative, experiential research method developed by Yoo Warren for minoritized groups to reclaim archives and access erased moments, histories, and spaces personally meaningful to them, through collectively crafted immersive 3D environments and other artistic means. You can read more about Seeing Lost Enclaves in previous blog posts. Jeff’s relational reconstruction toolkit is available on the LC Labs website.

---

This winter, as my work on Seeing Lost Enclaves continues, I’ve begun a series of collaborations to use the techniques in the Relational Reconstruction Toolkit to virtually recreate other erased communities of color around the country. One that’s been really interesting is my recent work with Evelyn Hang Yin, an artist based in LA who’s spent years working in and around Hanford, California’s China Alley. She writes about Hanford in a 2021 article for The China Project:

“The town of Hanford was formed in 1877 when the Southern Pacific Railroad extended into California’s San Joaquin Valley. Many Chinese laborers came to work on the tracks, and later stayed for farming. They were mostly from Sam Yup (三邑 sānyì), the three former counties of Namhoi (南海 nánhǎi), Poonyu (番禺 pānyú) and Shuntak (顺德 shùndé) in Canton — now known as Guǎngdōng 广东 — province. China Alley prospered to include restaurants, homes, boarding houses, general merchandise stores, herb shops, gambling establishments, a Chinese school, and a temple. Over 100 years later, the brick buildings remain largely intact and unaltered.”

The following is a transcript from my conversation with Evelyn about our work together building a relational reconstruction.

Jeff: So because most of [Hanford’s] buildings still exist, it’s different from sites like Portland, Oregon’s Chinese Vegetable Gardens, where Dri Chiu Tattersfield and I have had to recreate the community entirely from century old photographs, since it’s buried under 20+ feet of infill. Here, we’re working not only with your memories, but those of Arianne Wing, the President of China Alley Preservation Society. 

Evelyn: The Chinese population in Hanford started to decline after WWII, although it was a thriving community for decades after. I never witnessed that, since I only started going there in 2018, but Arianne has described to me many times how China Alley was a bustling place when she was growing up.  

The China Alley Preservation Society was founded more than 50 years ago, and the stewardship of China Alley has been passed down from generation to generation. It started with Arianne’s uncle, who owned the famous Imperial Dynasty restaurant, which occupied four buildings until it closed its doors in 2006. Folks of his generation became concerned about the Taoist Temple building (Kwan Tai Temple, 关帝庙 guāndì miào) next to the restaurant, that it was neglected and deteriorating in shape, so they formed the Society, formerly the Taoist Temple Preservation Society. 

Since my first visit in 2018, I slowly got to know the caretakers of China Alley—a very small group of local volunteers. Led by Arianne, they do all sorts of things, from curating, managing the gift shop, cleaning, fundraising, organizing the yearly Moon Festival (which has been paused since the pandemic). One of them offered me to stay with them every time I visited, which became instrumental in allowing me to continue doing work in Hanford. 

I’ve heard and experienced many different stories at China Alley- joy, death, water, fire, challenges, perseverance… 

Jeff: I think your long-term relationship with the people and place was one thing that really inspired me, and a reason I was very interested in doing this work together. I’ve spent so much time with records of places where I rarely have contact with descendants or continuity of community, apart from my starting point in Providence’s Chinatown, where I live. I was also excited to see what direction our collaboration would go in, after seeing your really interesting video, photo, and projection work in Hanford—not to mention your woodworking-based approach to reconstruction, which maybe we can talk about more another time. 

Evelyn: Our approach is distinct because as artists, we both got really excited about certain things (the likes of the symmetrical trees and building facades). China Alley is special because it still exists and it has more than just one building, allowing us to source from contemporary imagery, Google Street View for example, but also from a ton of archival photographs. As a result, the mixing of the two and how to make the buildings look consistent was the difficult but fun part. 

It might seem odd for us to “recreate” something that’s still there, but at least for me, this process made me look at these building so close at a level that I have not done before, even though I have taken so many photos of my own to the point where I felt I had exhausted all “new materials” to capture. Now I know which building has banisters and which don’t, which have decorative rooftops and which don’t, etc. I enjoyed these aspects of the process a lot, as well as when you analyzed the images more from the perspective of a historian, comparing photos from different eras and deducing information from them. 

Jeff: We both definitely got drawn into the tiniest of details and made some really intense diagrams. 

Evelyn: The last point I’ll make is the blending of history and imagination, and how I feel like 3D modeling is a perfect tool for this. The model is obviously based on historical materials, but it has a sense of gamification to its aesthetics, and the fact we played with it a lot…I was making my own work recently and talked to my friend about memory and imagination, how remembering always is partially an act of imagining—at least that’s how my memory works. 

 

This post has been updated to describe woodwork image as shared courtesy of the artist.

Today’s guest post is from Lauren Algee, a Senior Digital Collections Specialist in the Digital Content Management Section and a By the People community manager.**

---

Douglass Day 2024 marked the busiest day in the history of By the People, the Library of Congress’s crowdsourced transcription program. The transcribe-a-thon for the Frederick Douglass Papers was groundbreaking in multiple ways and marked the beginning of deeper collaboration between By the People and the Center for Black Digital Research at The Pennsylvania State University.

Every year on February 14, Frederick Douglass’s chosen birthday, the Center for Black Digital Research organizes a Douglass Day, celebration of, and day of service to, Black digital history. Since 2017, volunteers around the world have come together to transcribe and learn about an online collection of Black history and culture – the 2021 Douglass Day project was the Mary Church Terrell Papers at the Library of Congress. That day was formerly the biggest for By the People contribution… until now!

The 2024 Douglass Day service project focused on Douglass himself for the first time ever – specifically correspondence from the Frederick Douglass Papers. Frederick Douglass was one of the most influential activists, orators, and writers in history. His correspondence consists of letters received by Douglass (which documents his life as a public figure), his work as a writer and editor, and his family. By transcribing his letters in the “Yours truly, Frederick Douglass” campaign, volunteers can go behind the scenes of Douglass’s public and private life.

The Douglass transcription campaign launched on the morning of February 14, 2024. Over 8,500 people registered to participate in Douglass Day at 164 locations around the world. Local organizers hosted transcribe-a-thons at schools, libraries, and other community centers and tuned into a virtual event that included historical context, music, and, of course, birthday cake! At the close of the day, the By the People website had 123,000 page views and volunteers had started transcription for 7,500 pages, of which 1,500+ were also reviewed and completed. Transcription and volunteer review will continue until all 9,000+ pages are finalized!

The Frederick Douglass transcription campaign also prompted new opportunities for data sharing with the long-running Douglass Papers Project (DPP), which has endeavored since the 1970s to publish and annotate all of Douglass’s writings. By the People will incorporate existing DPP transcriptions of Douglass correspondence into loc.gov and the Douglass Papers Project will utilize volunteer transcriptions as the basis of their ongoing scholarly work on his correspondence.

And the By the People team is thrilled to announce that the success of Douglass Day 2024 is only the beginning! The Center for Black Digital Research and By the People recently signed a three-year agreement to both continue and deepen our collaboration on future Douglass Days to amplify the reach and audience of both organizations and create additional opportunities to share complementary knowledge and skills in outreach and public history.

---

**Featured title image above is courtesy of Douglass Day under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.