The Library of Congress Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program enables undergraduate and graduate students to experience the integrated analog and digital collections and services of the world's largest library. Working under the direction of Library curators and specialists in various divisions, fellows explore digital initiatives and increase access to the institution’s unparalleled collections, programs and resources.

• View LOC Gazette article
• View LOC Press Release and Roster of 40 Fellows
• View LOC 2020 Fellows introducing themselves

Display Day 2020 | A Virtual Experience

The Junior Fellows Program (JFP) 2020 Display Day has been redesigned from a one-day public event to a virtual format, due to the circumstances of the COVID-19 Pandemic. The 40 interns selected for this year’s program have accepted the opportunity to participate remotely and share their work on the projects developed by different service units and divisions throughout the Library of Congress.

The 2020 Display Day showcases the work of emerging professionals and encourage public access to Library of Congress collections. The new virtual approach has the potential to reach a wider national and international audience, and will function as a pilot project that can be implemented in the future, in fulfillment of the Library of Congress's mission.

African and Middle Eastern Division

Chelsey Brown, University of Missouri

African and Middle Eastern Division, E-Resources Access Project

Chelsey Brown worked with Laverne Page in the African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, on the electronic resource access project. The African Section has reference, bibliographic and collection development responsibilities for the 51 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. The Library of Congress’s Electronic Resources Catalog identifies 40 databases that have vital information for African studies researchers. However, the catalog as a whole contains around 1700 databases and many of these databases also contain significantly useful information for African studies research. Therefore, the purpose of this project was to enhance the Division’s reference services, open up the e-resources catalog to more African studies researchers, and draw more attention to databases currently under-utilized at the Library for African studies research. Chelsey jointly examined the 1700 databases and identified those with critical information on Africa to include on the African Studies site, under the “Regional & Cultural Studies” category.

View: Project Video 02:06 - Chelsey L. Brown, a summer 2020 Junior Fellow, explains the importance of her project and LibGuide.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Briana Gausland, Wheaton College

African and Middle Eastern Division, E-Resources Access Project

Joining the Near Eastern Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division, Briana Gausland’s project aims to enhance awareness and access to the Division’s e-resources for online readers and researchers. Principally, Briana worked to create the first country guide within the Near Eastern Section, focusing specifically on the country of Egypt. In order to accomplish this task, she first had to begin by surveying the libraries various digital collections and databases for valuable content. She then worked to write and construct a Libguide, consisting of nine separate pages, in order to deliver this information in an organized and consise manner. In addition, Briana has assisted in the documentation and organization of Near Eastern subject webcasts available through the Division’s website, in order to make this content more accessible and discoverable for researchers.

View: Project Video 02:13 - Briana Gausland, a Junior Fellow in the African and Middle Eastern Division speaks about the LibGuide she has created about Egypt, while highlighting the importance of bringing resources to online researchers.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

August Kahn, Pitzer College

African and Middle Eastern Division, E-Resources Access Project

Among all of the 675 titles of 16th-century Hebrew books in the Hebraic Section of the Library, August Kahn chose to present the story of Lehem Yehudah, a commentary on the classic Pirkei Avot, which was thrown into the flames during the Church-ordered public burnings of the Talmud and other Hebrew books in Venice, 1553. The author was forced to rewrite the text completely from memory. Lehem Yehudah’s fate represents the innovative and at times precarious history of 16th-century Hebrew printing. The survival of this rare book in the Library of Congress and its awe-inspiring story show us that the retention of information is never divorced from politics and can be a powerful act of empowerment.

View: Project Video 02:18 August Kahn, a Junior Fellow in African and Middle Eastern Division the Hebraic Section, explores the story behind Lehem Yehudah, a Hebrew book from the Library's collection that was printed and publicly burned in 16th-century Venice, Italy

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

African, Latin American and Western European Division

Madeline Goebel, University of Texas

Jeremy Thompson, University of Arizona

African Academic Journal Indexing Project

Madeline Goebel and Jeremy Thompson worked with the African Academic Journal Project, which aims to help researchers gain access to academic journals published on the African continent by digitizing the table of content data and full articles and posting the images online at www.loc.gov. As Junior Fellows, they wrote the first full-journal digitization proposal for titles published in Nigeria. Madeline and Jeremy took existing criteria for inclusion, adapted it according to the limitations of remote work, and compiled a list of qualifying titles. They also created guidelines for title selection for other countries and strategized on the Africa Section’s continuing partnership with other Africana collections in the United States.

View: Project Video 02:46 - Junior Fellows Madeline Goebel and Jeremy Thompson present their work on the African Academic Journal Project

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Asian Division

Quade Robinson, Harvard University

Prewar and Occupation Period Japanese Serials

Quade Robinson analyzed the Asian Division’s “B Collection,” which contains most of the prewar and occupation period Japanese language serials at the Library of Congress. He sorted the roughly 4000 titles into groupings to aid librarians in the Asian Division and future researchers in accessing and utilizing the collection. Quade used the available metadata to group over a thousand of the titles into geographic regions, and hundreds of titles according to their thematic ties, creating a useful and accessible LibGuide for the Library of Congress’s website.

View: Project Video 03:07 - Quade Robinson, a 2020 Junior Fellow, introduces himself and describes his work on the Prewar Japanese Serials Project.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Copyright Modernization Office, Program Management Section

Crystal Williams, Virginia State University

Program and Project Management Community of Practice

Crystal Williams’ Junior Fellows project involved working with Presidential and Congressional agencies to create a Digital Community of Practice (DCOP) for Program and Project Management (PM). Her tasks included researching and rating Federal websites to identify the one best-suited to host a virtual library of information. The objective is for the community to digitally or virtually participate, connect, and inspire. Site considerations include: accessibility, user friendliness, navigation, and a Federal government domain. The project is a precedent-setting learning and collaboration portal, accessible to all Legislative, Judicial and Executive branches, Federal agencies, and associated Federal types (e.g., Independent, Small Agency Council, and Tribal communities). DCOP embraces inclusiveness for all, which fits with Dr Hayden’s vision of the Library of Congress being “America’s Library of Diversity."

View: Project Video 02:05 - Crystal Williams, a Junior Fellow for the U.S. Copyright Office, talks about her experiences regarding the Junior Fellows Program. In addition to her responsibilities with the JFP, Crystal discusses her duties with creating a digital portal.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Digital Collections Management and Services

Randi Proescholdt, University of Illinois

Improving Access to Rights Foreign Newspapers

Randi Proescholdt’s project involved working with the Digital Content Management Section to improve access to the Library’s digital collections. She reviewed more than 700 freely available (open access) e-books hosted on the Library of Congress website, noting issues with their description and presentation. In addition, Randi helped identify 120 open access e-books restricted to onsite use and verified that they were also publicly accessible. Finally, she investigated over 800 electronic journals restricted to onsite use and determined which were freely available online and therefore potential additions to the Library’s public collections.

View: Project Video 01:19 - Randi Proescholdt, a 2020 Junior Fellow in the Digital Content Management Section, discusses her experience working with digital materials, especially open access e-books.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Digital Strategy

Hibba Khan, George Mason University

The Untold History of Two Digital Collections

Hibba Khan, a Junior Fellow working with the Digital Strategy Division, was assigned to create a model for a data set biography. She decided to create two separate biographies to highlight the difference between creating a digital collection from digital-born material and creating an online collection with materials drawn from the Library’s collections. Hibba chose the “Political Islam Web Archive” and the “Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age” collection. Her two biographies trace the histories of these digital collections. Interviews from the curators themselves provide insight into the process of creating digital collections, the Library’s internal functions, and archival practices in general. Hibba’s model will be creatively displayed on the digital StoryMap platform.

View: Project Video 01:55 - Hibba Khan, a Junior Fellow working with the Digital Strategy team, explains the significance of charting the history and provenance of digital collections.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Nina Kostic, University of Rhode Island

Visualizing Serbian-American History through Digitized Library of Congress Content

Junior Fellow Nina Kostic’s project describes Serbian-American history through visual and audio content displayed on an interactive map. It draws information from a number of Library of Congress digitized collections, ranging from the Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings, to the Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information photograph collection, and many other collections. The purpose of this project is to communicate the history of a certain ethnic group through the wealth of information the Library of Congress holds.

View: Project Video 02:37 - Nina Kostic, a 2020 Junior Fellow working with the Digital Strategy team, describes her project which consisted of creating an interactive visual map for Library of Congress users to learn more about Serbian-American history.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Selena Qian, Duke University

Experimental Ways to Share Digital Library of Congress

Selena Qian’s project combines the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and the Newspaper Navigator dataset into an interactive website that encourages discovery and exploration of the history of places. Both of these sites contain vast collections of material that can be difficult to parse: the Sanborn collection comprises 50,513 maps, (around 32,000 of which are currently available online) and the Newspaper Navigator dataset draws from more than 16 million pages of historical newspapers. Selena’s work is part of a larger effort to create experimental ways to present Library collections. Her goals with the project are to connect a wider, more casual audience to this vast amount of material and introduce an element of serendipity through the random selection of a newspaper image.

View: Project Video 02:46 - Selena Qian, Summer 2020 Junior Fellow with the Digital Strategy Division, discusses her project, which aims to use interactive technology to engage wider audiences with the history of places through the Sanborn Fire Maps collection and Newspaper Navigato

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Emily Sienkiewicz, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts

Reimaging Digital Programs Veterans History Project: WWI Digital Audio Collection

The goals of this project were to reimagine a digital collection of the Library, make it more accessible, and to connect it with other collections. Emily Sienkiewicz was drawn to work with the Veterans History Project collection of World War I audio interviews because she recognized the importance of preserving the memory of the veterans in this digital age, especially now that they are all deceased. The digitized collection contains about 30 hours of audio, consisting of 29 interviews. Emily transcribed over 13 hours of audio for 23 interviews, which makes this collection 79% transcribed. She also created a website and digital representations of the collection. These included a timeline, a map of the veterans’ service locations, and a story map of one of the veterans. Emily hopes that these efforts provide tools and inspiration for the Veterans History Project to display their collection digitally.

View: Project Video 02:51 - Emily Sienkiewicz, a Junior Fellow with the Digital Strategy Division, explains her fellowship project about reimagining how to display the Veterans History Project collection of World War I audio interviews.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Tyler Youngman, Syracuse University

Online User-Centered Outreach Strategies

Over the course of Tyler Youngman’s Junior Fellow project, he worked to identify key audiences for the LC for Robots web page (https://labs.loc.gov/lc-for-robots), research best practices in user-experience design, and propose recommendations for an engaging website redesign for LC for Robots. Ultimately, the goal of the redesign is to further promote the use of library collections data and computational resources. The page itself features guides on how to access and use digital library services, including APIs (application programming interfaces) and bulk data.

View: Project Video 01:33 - Tyler shares details about his project on researching online user centered outreach strategies for LC for Robots, a web resource created by the Library of Congress Labs team to encourage patron use of the library's digital and computational resources.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Hispanic Division

Allison Booher, Vanderbilt University

Audio Engagement Fellow Hispanic and Indigenous Languages

The Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, soon to be called the PALABRA Archive, is an initiative started in 1943 by the Library of Congress to record writers from Spain, Portugal, Latin America, the Caribbean, and from the Hispanic community in the United States reading from their poems and prose. The Archive boasts the works of authors such as Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez, Octavio Paz, and Mario Vargas Llosa. Spanish and Portuguese predominate in the Archive, but these are not the only influential languages in Latin America. The region has a foundational and complex matrix of modern Indigenous languages, with millions of speakers.

Indigenous cultures, especially the Maya, have a rich literary tradition. However, authors in these languages are often less represented in the global sphere. In 2019, the Archive began a project to highlight the work of Indigenous writers, beginning with nine recordings in Chiapas, Mexico, where there is a thriving Maya literary community. Allison’s project focuses on processing and cataloguing these recording and creating a LibGuide for Maya literature on the Archive website.

View: Project Video 02:57 - Allison describes the PALABRA Archive’s initiative to include more Mayan authors reading from their poetry and prose. She provides examples of the catalog records for the audio files.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Matthew Bova, University of Mary Washington

Visualizing and Mapping Hispanic Collections and Services

Matthew Bova employed computer programming to access, extract, and visualize the Library’s public data on available digitized items from Spanish-speaking countries. The goals of this project are to see digitally available Hispanic items in the contact of the whole to enable future decisions. This visualization allows the Hispanic Division to understand what has been made available to remote users and to identify opportunities for future digitization. One might observe, for example, disparities like the relative absence of digitally accessible Spanish language newspapers, which inspire questions for planning and cooperation in the future.

View: Project Video 01:25 - Matthew Bova, 2020 Junior Fellow, describes his project’s progress and his experience working with the Library of Congress.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Herman Chavez, UCLA

Audio Engagement Fellow Hispanic and Indigenous Languages

The Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, soon to be renamed the PALABRA Archive, is a collection of nearly 800 original audio recordings of twentieth- and twenty-first-century Luso-Hispanic poets and writers reading from their works. While the majority of the recordings have been conducted at the Library, the Archive also relies on recordings made offsite of authors who may not have the resources or availability to travel to Washington, D.C., for a session. As an Audio Engagement Fellow, Herman created an educational guide to provide to national and global locations, allowing them to have ease of access when contributing to the Archive.

View: Project Video 02:57 - Herman Luis Chavez, a Junior Fellow for the Hispanic Division, describes his work in design, content, and outreach for off-site recordings with the Archive of Hispanic Literature on Tape, soon to be known as the PALABRA Archive.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Maria Guadalupe Partida, St. Mary's University

Stolen: An Indigenous Story of Conquest

Maria Guadalupe Partida created a digital story map titled “Stolen: An Indigenous Story of Conquest” that presents the account of Titlantli, an omnipresent narrator and one-time inhabitant of the great Aztec capital of Tenochtitlán. This digital effort aims to increase user access to the Library’s Hispanic collections through the development and use of visual learning tools. Maria included highlights from the Library’s Hispanic collections, the Jay I. Kislak collection, the treasured Huexotzinco Codex, and its online exhibition, 1492: An Ongoing Voyage, in her engaging digital story map.

View: Project Video 01:38 - Maria Guadalupe Partida, a 2020 Junior Fellow, gives an explanation of her digital story map titled Stolen: An Indigenous Story of Conquest. This site was developed using Hispanic collections items from the Library's online catalog.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Informal Learning Office

Paige Collins, University of Georgia

Informal Learning and Engagement Design

Paige Collins’ Junior Fellows project, “Informal Learning Design,” involved the creation and prototyping of online programming for families and children. Stemming from a desire to encourage families to share their stories with each other, the project’s main effort was the creation of online resources for families that included an oral history activity and a blog post of thinking and writing prompts in the series “Best of the National Book Festival.” The project also involved an immersion into current theory and practice of informal learning and museum education through readings and webinars, including weekly meetings with the Library’s User Experience team and the Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region Conference.

View: Project Video 01:36 - Paige Collins, a 2020 Junior Fellow, discusses her project, Informal Learning Design, including the creation of online resources for children and families.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

IT Design & Development Directorate

Zoe Ruthe Singleton, University of Maryland

Captioning Proposal for Digital Collections

This project serves as an implementation strategy for the introduction of captioning services into the workflow of the Library of Congress’ digital collections, specifically those in video format. Part of this process is to identify the decision points, priorities, and order in which captioning of Library collections could be implemented, in an attempt to create a long-term, ongoing accessibility development program for video collection items.

View: Project Video 02:20 - Zoe Singleton, the Library's 2020 Junior Fellow for Journey Mapping Digital Accessibility, discusses an overview of her captioning project. The captioning workflow outlined here would apply to digital collections not produced by the Library of Congress.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Kluge Center

Tracee Haupt, University of Maryland

Twenty Years of Kluge Scholars

The twentieth anniversary of the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress is an opportune time to celebrate the nearly one thousand scholars who have been a part of the Center’s history. This project focused on reviewing alumni data, building an alumni community, and publicizing alumni achievements. Tracee Haupt gathered information about alumni and consolidated it into an easy-to-search database. She administered a survey to obtain additional information, and developed a digital profile template to showcase alumni in future publications. The results of this project will help inform future Kluge alumni programming.

View: Project Video 02:08 - Tracee Haupt, a 2020 Library of Congress Junior Fellow, discusses a project to boost alumni engagement at the John W. Kluge Center.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Michael Steffen, University of Iowa

Mapping a Global Community of Scholars

The Kluge Center is a scholarly center where accomplished researchers gather to make use of the Library of Congress’s collections and interact with members of Congress. Its mission is to engage and inform policymakers and the American people on topics of interest to the national and global discourse. Michael Steffen’s Junior Fellows project used the ArcGIS StoryMap platform and compiled resources in multiple formats to expand community engagement with the Kluge Center research initiatives and events. Michael sought to enhance the ways researchers and the general public connect to the wealth of resources and opportunities available at the Kluge Center.

View: Project Video 02:47 - Michael Steffen, 2020 Junior Fellow for the Library of Congress, celebrates the Kluge Center’s 20-year anniversary by walking through its interactive StoryMap project.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Knowledge Services Group/Congressional Research Service

Sarah Patrick, University of Maryland

Quotations Database Prototype

The Congressional Research Service (CRS) responds to requests for quotations using reference sources, one being Respectfully Quoted, a book of over 2,000 quotations compiled by CRS staff and published by the Library of Congress in 1989. For her project, Sarah Patrick converted sample quotations from the printed book into a database using the graph database platform Neo4J. The resulting prototype allows online users to find quotations and visually identify relationships to other quotations. Sarah’s database encourages curiosity and enables discovery of other information that users may have not thought of. Transforming an analog resource into an interactive digital experience will facilitate CRS’s mission to serve members of Congress and their staff.

View: Project Video 03:00 - Sarah Patrick discusses the benefits of converting the quotation book Respectfully Quoted from a print document to a visual graph database. The process of finding a quotation for a requestor’s speech is compared between using a print version and a graph.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript |

Law Library of Congress, Digital Resources Division

Jessica Craig, University of California

Law Library Web Design and Usability

While Jessica Craig spent the summer working on multiple projects with the Law Library of Congress, her primary project involves web design and user experience updates for LAW.gov, and more specifically for the online collection of the Law Library’s legal research reports. Legal reports are written by Law Library Legal Specialists in response to requests from members of Congress and other federal agencies, and these reports are also made available online to the general public. There are currently 800+ accessible reports, and it has been Jessica’s goal to introduce new ways to navigate these reports on the website to benefit all types of users.

View: Project Video 02:31 - Jessica Craig, a Junior Fellow working with the Law Library of Congress, describes her current projects. The projects focus on updating multiple online resources offered by the Law Library of Congress

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Learning and Innovation Office

Keely Shaw, Angelo State University

Elizabeth Whitfield, Loyola University New Orleans

Calling the Shots: American Nursing During the Interwar Period

Calling the Shots: American Nursing during the Interwar Period is a compilation of primary sources related to American nursing between World War I and World War II. Junior Fellows, Keely Shaw and Elizabeth Whitfield chose these sources with several questions for educational use in mind: What might one learn from these sources? How might they be of use to educators? How can one make this historical narrative more clear? Beginning with Spanish Flu and ending with Farm Security Administration nurses, Calling the Shots brings together a mix of primary sources in the Library’s collections, including interviews, photos, music, and film that can be used in a variety of educational ways.

View: Project Video 04:29 - Keely Shaw and Liza Whitfield present their project, Calling the Shots: American Nursing During the Interwar Period, a set of primary sources from the Library's online collections. They highlight key sources, explain their significance, and show how educators might use them with students.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Literary Initiatives

Mallory Haselberger, University of Maryland

Ethan D. McFerren, University of Virginia

Jake Newman, American University

Literary Program Development

The 2020 Literary Initiatives Junior Fellows examined the U.S. Poet Laureateship, from its beginnings in 1937 to the present, and explored future possibilities for the Library’s most historical literary position. The laureateship role, originally viewed as having responsibilities similar to those of a reference librarian, has, over time, been transformed into more of an outreach-based position focused on sharing the importance and appreciation of poetry with the American public. By examining the history of the laureateship, as well as detailing signature projects of contemporary poets laureate, including Tracy K. Smith and Joy Harjo, the goal of the project was to understand the continued impact, significance, and future possibilities of U.S. Poet Laureate outreach.

View: Project Video 05:31 - Junior Fellows Display Day video features Literary Program Development interns Mal Haselberger, Ethan McFerren, and Jake Newman discussing the U.S. Poet Laureate position from its beginnings in 1937 to the present, and exploring future possibilities for the Library of Congress’ most historic literary position.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Motion Picture, Broadcast, and Recorded Sound Division

Meredith Atkinson, University of South Carolina

Patty Templeton, University of Illinois

Increasing Accessibility of Early Motion Pictures

The Library of Congress’s National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) in Culpepper, Virginia, houses over 1.6 million moving image items. The collection includes a range of materials, from photographic prints of early films to digital files of modern releases, as well as newsreels, television programs, educational and industrial films, and advertising materials. 2020 Junior Fellows Meredith Atkinson and Patty Templeton researched copyright statuses of the Library’s early motion picture holdings. When copyright protection expires, films enter the public domain and can be potentially shared with users after digitization. This project aims to increase accessibility of early twentieth-century motion pictures to deepen insight into the world’s audiovisual cultural heritage.

View: Project Video 02:55 - Library of Congress Junior Fellows Meredith Atkinson and Patty Templeton discuss their remote internship investigating copyright statuses of early 20th-century cinema with the Moving Image Section of the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled

Lily Smith, University of Pennsylvania

Making Braille Music Materials Digitally Accessible

The Music Section of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) holds the largest collection of braille music in the world—with thousands of scores, texts, and audio recordings. NLS makes this material accessible to blind and print-disabled patrons, by providing large-print, audio recordings, and braille versions of the content. Lily Smith created records and metadata for the collection and helped with the digitization process. She formatted scanned PDFs of liner notes and music appreciation material into a word document, which will be translated into braille and used for the large-print texts and audio recordings. She also helped to organize and create metadata for the catalog records.

Vivian T Tompkins, Syracuse University

Making Braille Music Materials Digitally Accessible

The Music Section of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) is working to increase digital access to its collection of more than 23,000 braille music scores. Patrons can download digital scores and read them using a refreshable braille display device or emboss them directly from the digital file. Vivian Thompkins’s Junior Fellows project involved a selection of scores published by the National Braille Association—converting the scores from older file formats to Braille Ready Format (BRF) and helping to create catalog records for them. The scores will be accessible through the NLS Online Catalog and the Braille and Audio Reading Download (BARD) service.

Video 02:00/2:55 - Junior Fellow Lily Smith describes her experience digitizing braille scores and making music material accessible to the blind and print-disabled. / Junior Fellow Vivian Tompkins discusses her internship project at the Music Section of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled. She gives an overview of her work with digital braille music scores, and reflects on her experiences as an intern in the NLS Music Section.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript - Lily Smith

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript - Vivian Tompkins

Preservation Research and Testing Division

Franky Moore, Carnegie Mellon University

Preservation Measuring Light Source Effects

Light damage is a concern for many collection items; light level surveys and direct micro-fade tests on objects can assure their safe exhibition. Many cultural heritage institutions are switching to LEDs for energy savings, however few systematic studies exist on potential LED fading of colorants and paper materials. Franky Moore’s project explores novel ways of visualizing lighting survey and fading test data. Mathematical tools, like SigmaPlot and Excel, facilitate direct comparisons between the effects of LED and Xenon lamp tests on objects and lighting conditions in various settings of interest. Data collected on objects or public areas’ light sources is linked to an interactive website which provides viewers access from anywhere in the world following International Image Interoperability Framework methodologies.

View: Project Video 02:48 - Demonstration and discussion of 2020 Junior Fellow project investigating how different light sources affect the photochemical aging of inks and papers, and developing tools for visualization and interpretation of this data. Demonstration of how different types of light affect items’ appearance.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Katarina Stiller, Fullerton College

Preservation Science Reference Center Project

Katarina Stiller’s Junior Fellows project aimed to create a “visual terminology” for images of different condition states of Library collection materials and provide greater access to the analytical methods used to quantify the varying conditions of books and their material components. This effort will assist with the Mellon-funded “Assessing the National Collection” project for paper materials and help create a platform so that this information can more easily and effectively be shared with collections professionals for decision-making purposes. Using concise and consistent vocabulary and classification allows for easier sharing and usage by people and computers. The project’s ultimate goal is to better communicate and engage with professionals across institutions using existing scientific and cultural terminologies for describing books, helping gain a greater understanding of how materials deteriorate and how to better preserve them.

View: Project Video 02:27 - Katarina Stiller, Junior Fellow Intern, discusses the Preservation Science Reference Center Project.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Researcher and Reference Services

Katherine Howell, University of Illinois

Spotlighting Main Reading Room Collections and Resources

In an effort to highlight the Researcher and Reference Services Division’s collections and research resources, Katherine Howell converted resources from the legacy web guide interface onto the LibGuides platform. She focused on two legacy resources in particular: the State Digital Resources web guide and the Library’s American Memory collections. The State Digital Resources web guide was originally a list of 134 digital collections and memory projects by archives, cultural institutions, museums, and libraries, organized by state. Katherine restructured the collection’s LibGuide with a page for each state, updated existing links and descriptions, and added additional resources, bringing the total number of linked resources to 223—a 66% increase. She also highlighted other collections throughout the Library by providing links to searches in the Library’s digital and physical catalogs, images from each state from the Library’s digital collections, and links to Library guides in other divisions.

The other portion of her project focused on the Library’s former American Memory collections. The collections, which were one of the first major efforts at digitization in the Library, no longer exist in their previous formats, but are now integrated into the Library’s other digital collections. In order to facilitate the ability of users to locate the over 140 collections in American Memory held at the Library and at partner institutions, Katherine helped to create a guide to these collections on the Library’s website, along with extensive historical and technical background information.

View: Project Video 02:30 - Katherine Howell, a 2020 Junior Fellow in the Researcher and Reference Services Division, discusses her project assignment and her experience in the Junior Fellows program

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Science, Technology, and Business Division

Sophie Lefebvre, Carleton College

Consumer Marketing at the Start of the Great Depression

Businesses in the United States used a variety of marketing tactics to appeal to consumers from 1929 to 1933, as the economy entered the Great Depression and consumer spending hit historic lows. This project focused on creating a research guide about the marketing efforts during that time period, which reflected consumers’ concerns about societal and economic conditions. Sophie Lefebvre compiled, organized, and annotated nearly one hundred sources, including advertisements, trade publications, historical market research information, and secondary sources from the Library of Congress collections and other publicly available materials.

View: Project Video 01:53 - Sophie Lefebvre, Junior Fellow, describes her project creating a LibGuide about consumer marketing at the start of the Great Depression and provides examples of advertising material from the Library's collection.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Sophia Southard, University of Kansas

History of African American Business and Entrepreneurship

Sophia Southard helped her project mentor create a Library Guide titled, “History of African American Business and Entrepreneurship.” She also wrote a series of blogs on a variety of subjects that included: African American nurses; midwives; tuberculosis; newspapers; the NAACP; the hair, beauty, and fashion industries; as well as Chinese immigrants and African Americans during the Gold Rush. Sophia identifed pictures and drawings from the W.E.B. Du Bois collections that include Thomas J. Calloway’s “American Negro Exhibit” at the Paris Exposition of 1900 material and collections on the Great Migration.

View: Project Video 01:16 - Sophia Southard, 2020 Junior Fellow Intern, introduces herself and discusses her internship.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Bailey Isabella Ward, William & Mary

Trade Beads: Commodity and Currency

“Trade Beads: Commodities and Currency”, a 2020 Junior Fellows project proposed by the Business Section of the Science, Technology and Business Division, used Library of Congress resources to examine the global and historical nature of trade beads. Bailey Ward’s process included communication with various departments within the Library, such as the Overseas Offices in Cairo and Nairobi; National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled; African and Middle Eastern, Asian, and Geography and Map Divisions; Law Library; the U.S. Copyright Office; and consulting the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog. These resources allowed Bailey to narrow her analysis to the study of the politics, economics and artistic value of the Ife beads.

View: Project Video 02:50 - Bailey Ward, a 2020 Junior Fellow describes her project which consisted of an examination of indigenous trade beads from Ile-Ife in Southwest Nigeria spanning the eleventh to fourteenth centuries, and subsequent Ife bead replications in Europe as a result of trans-Atlantic market demands.

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Signature Programs Office

Saraya Flaig, University of Idaho

Sally Johnson, University of Oklahoma

Archiving the National Book Festival

In preparation for the twentieth National Book Festival, 2020 Junior Fellows Saraya Flaig and Sally Johnson archived the last twenty years of the Library’s immensely popular annual festival. Their project included assessing the National Book Festival website, adding a “History” page to the program site, curating a photo gallery drawn from all of the past festivals, repackaging and creating new content for the website, and researching digital outreach strategies for the festival. Saraya and Sally created a proposal for the Signature Programs Office that highlights their work on the website and research for the 2020 festival, which will debut virtually in September 2020. The proposal includes best practices, guidelines, and suggestions for the upcoming as well as future National Book Festivals.

View: Project Video 03:05 - Saraya Flaig and Sally Johnson, who are 2020 Junior Fellows in the Signature Program Office, discuss their project of archiving the National Book Festival

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript - Saraya Flaig

View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript - Sally Johnson