For the past 31 years, the Library of Congress has convened the Junior Fellows Program to support emerging professionals (undergraduate and graduate students) to gain career experience by working with analog and digital collections and supporting the services of the world’s largest library. 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 2022 Press Release and Roster of 46 Fellows

Display Day 2022 | A Virtual Experience

The Junior Fellows Program 2022 Display Day continues as a public presentation in a fully virtual format, due to the circumstances of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The virtual approach also allows the event to reach a wider national and international audience, which supports the mission of the Library of Congress.

The 46 talented interns selected for this year’s program have accepted the opportunity to participate remotely and share their work on the projects throughout the Library of Congress. The 2022 Display Day showcases the research and achievements of these emerging professionals and encourages public engagement with Library of Congress collections.

The Junior Fellows Program has been a signature program of the Library of Congress since 1991. It is made possible by a gift from the late James Madison Council member Nancy Glanville Jewell through the Glanville Family Foundation and the Knowledge Navigators Trust Fund and by an investment from the Mellon Foundation.

Copyright Office

Vela Burke, Queens College

• Copyright Office
• Office of Public Information & Education
• Copyright for Kids

Copyright for Kids supports the United States Copyright Office’s strategic plan goal “Copyright for All” to reach out to diverse and varied audiences, groups, and ages. Seeking to make copyright accessible to all, Vela and her co-Fellow Rose Hollander partnered to help answer the question “What should the role of the United States Copyright Office be in educating youth?”

Children today are inundated with information, and are tasked with learning media, digital and news literacy. Technology has also made it easier than ever to create, access, duplicate, and share information. Copyright literacy has therefore become a 21st century life skill, helping kids become ethical digital citizens, who are able to responsibly and ethically use digital media to communicate and engage in society.

Vela and Rose identified primary and secondary school audiences, developed a strategy for creation of educational content, and developed an outreach and communications plan. Copyright for Kids will provide librarians, educators, parents and students with much needed information on copyright. Aiming to make learning fun, and incorporate creative and innovative approaches in copyright education, Copyright for Kids looks at copyright through the lens of creativity, for today’s creative kids.

View: Project Video – Vela Burke, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Rose Hollander, Tufts University

• Copyright Office
• Office of Public Information & Education
• Copyright for Kids

In the U.S. Copyright Office, 2022 Junior Fellows Rose Hollander and Vela Burke worked on connecting youth to copyright. To learn how students currently relate to copyright law, Rose and Vela worked with educators. Their conversations with educators sparked insights, which later helped the pair develop a communications and outreach plan. This plan includes outreach to children, as well as to the adults who influence them. The plan especially targets artistic and tech-oriented children.

The Copyright for Kids project included a focus on teacher-oriented outreach. Rose and her co-Fellow Vela Burke identified and compiled relevant educational content standards to form an educational content strategy. This content strategy was foundational as the two Fellows developed teacher-oriented outreach and sample classroom materials.

View: Project Video – Rose Hollander, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Congressional Research Service

Aimee Clesi, University of Florida

• Congressional Research Service
• American Law Division
• Constitution Annotated: Supreme Court Biographies

As a 2022 Junior Fellow, Aimee Clesi worked with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service. Using legal and historical research, she drafted a biography of William Paterson (1745-1806), one of the U.S. Supreme Court’s earliest Justices, for the Constitution Annotated (constitution.congress.gov). Aimee consulted a range of archival material from the Manuscript Division and the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress and elsewhere, including the New York Public Library, the New Jersey Historical Society Library, and the Supreme Court Historical Society. Aimee’s biography of Paterson references images, manuscripts, and letters—including correspondence between Paterson and George Washington—to contextualize the Justice’s jurisprudence in light of his personal background and colonial American society. This project led Clesi to develop a deeper understanding of Justice Paterson and the role played by the U.S. Supreme Court in American history, and provided an opportunity for Aimee to share that information with others in a novel way.

View: Project Video – Aimee Clesi, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

José Molinelli, Interamerican University of Puerto Rico - Faculty of Law

• Congressional Research Service
• American Law Division
• Constitution Annotated: Supreme Court Biographies

As a 2022 Junior Fellow, José Molinelli worked with the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service researching Supreme Court Justice James Iredell. From 1790 to 1799, Iredell, an Englishman who had come to the Americas in 1767, served as one of the first Supreme Court Justices of the newly formed United States. Throughout his Supreme Court tenure, he laid the intellectual framework for many constitutional doctrines such as judicial review, along with other principles such as the prohibition of ex post facto laws, freedom of the press, and the applicability of natural law in adjudicative scenarios. However, Iredell receives little credit in these regards, and the life story and legacy of this remarkable man appears to pale in comparison to that of his contemporaries. The topic of this research shall be to address an understudied and essential figure in the judicial history of the United States. Despite an existing legal record of his casework, legal historians largely neglect his life, and its influences on his judicial ideology. Ultimately, José’s research shall reinforce the understanding of U.S. legal history by examining judicial reports, letters, correspondence, articles, legal documents, and past biographies to construct a narrative of Iredell’s life and legacy.

View: Project Video – José Molinelli, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Chandler Quaile, Vanderbilt University

• Congressional Research Service
• American Law Division
• Constitution Annotated: Supreme Court Biographies

This project aims to cover the Supreme Court and its history through the in-depth study of its justices. Given the task of covering Oliver Ellsworth, 2022 Junior Fellow Chandler Quaile was asked to a combined social, intellectual and cultural history to understand and contextualize the justice and their impact. Oliver Ellsworth, the third Supreme Court justice, provides a fascinating study into the early Court’s founding and history. The project sheds light on a founding nation’s highest judiciary, informed by particular times and people.

View: Project Video - Chandler Quaile, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Joseph Rodriguez, Duke University

• Congressional Research Service
• American Law Division
• Constitution Annotated: Supreme Court Biographies

2022 Junior Fellow Joseph Rodriguez’s project this summer looks at the life of Supreme Court Justice William Cushing (1732-1810), putting his jurisprudence in the context of the years immediately following the nation’s founding. This project is sponsored by the American Law Division of the Congressional Research Service, which aims to compile a biography of every Supreme Court Justice for inclusion in the Constitution Annotated website in order to help readers better understand a Justice’s role in shaping American law and the Court. Joseph’s biography of Cushing will cover his jurisprudence and overall influence on the history of the Court. By researching Cushing, Joseph seeks to illuminate the various factors that can impact a Justice’s jurisprudence.

View: Project Video – Joseph Rodriguez, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Library Collections and Services Group

Mari Allison, University of British Colombia

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Digital Collections Management & Services Division
• Strategic Planning and Updates for Digital File Formats

The Sustainability of Digital Formats website is the world’s leading resource for information and analysis on 530+ digital file formats across a wide range of content categories. It is foundational to digital preservation work within the Library and for users across the U.S. and internationally. Junior Fellow Mari Allison, along with co-Fellow Dan Hockstein, worked on a survey of formats website users to determine how to improve the resource and better promote access and usability. This project involved establishing a set of user profiles, in alignment with the Library’s 2019-2023 Strategic Plan, to help contextualize the international users of the Formats site. The survey, which will result in a final analytical report with recommendations, will consist of two major components: a detailed questionnaire and selective informational interviews. In addition to the survey, Mari helped keep the Formats website current by revising format descriptions with new information and replacing broken links on the website. Mari also matched data between file format descriptions and other online format resources, which helps strengthen the Library’s standing as a contributor to the international file format community.

View: Project Video - Mari Allison, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Shir Bach, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Manuscript Division
• Enhancing Access to Native American Materials in the Manuscript Division

As part of his work with the Manuscript Reading Room, Shir Bach created a LibGuide of Native American resources in the Manuscript Division. With more than 71 million items in 12 thousand collections, the Manuscript Division holds a wealth of primary sources that touch on every aspect of American history and society. Though staff published a print guide to Native American resources in the Library of Congress in the 1990s, there has never been an online resource to guide the public through the Manuscript Division’s extensive holdings on the indigenous peoples of North America. Using the print guide as a base, Shir drafted a LibGuide that highlights relevant materials in well-known collections from American presidents, senators, and military officers. The guide also features lesser-known collections, like the papers of Osage literacy advocate Virginia H. Mathews. Throughout the project, Shir focused on crafting a guide that would be attentive to gaps in the historical record and place the Division’s materials into the larger context of indigenous dispossession, genocide, assimilation, and resistance in the United States. When it is published, the LibGuide will be available alongside other Manuscript Division guides.

View: Project Video - Shir Bach, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Sarah Baluta, University of North Texas

• Library Collections and Services Group
• African & Middle Eastern Division
• Uncovering Poetry in African Languages

2022 Junior Fellow Sarah Baluta assisted the African Section of the African & Middle Eastern Reading Room with surveying the large collections of poetry published in indigenous African languages. As the daughter of African immigrants, Sarah felt an immediate connection to the project. Utilizing a variety of acquisitions methods over more than five decades, the Library has acquired manifestations of African poetry in a number of formats and in hundreds of indigenous languages. This creative work is found in all likely and unlikely corners of the Library, and much of it cannot be located using conventional search techniques. African language poetry is often simply catalogued as “language—texts”, with no indication in the notes field of the poetic contents. Moreover, much poetry that came to life in African literary or cultural journals is entirely unindexed. By searching for specific macrolanguages, singular languages, and the different dialects within them, Sarah was able to comb through numerous sources to compile a thesaurus linking languages to unique oral traditions and cultures across Sub-Saharan Africa. This thesaurus will support the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and its affiliates, such as this Library, as they properly update the African Poetry Digital Portal.

View: Project Video - Sarah Baluta, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

A.B. Bejar, University of San Francisco

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division
• Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections

2022 Junior Fellow A.B. Bejar’s project, Weaving Community Narratives & Histories: A Resource Guide for an Interconnected Andean World, is a special collection of the Library’s resources, relevant external sources, and interviews with Quechua and Andean scholars, educators, artists, musicians, and community members. The Quechua and Andean historical documents preserved at the Library of Congress will be in dialogue with important community narratives in order to strengthen the relationship between the Library’s Collections and the communities they represent. This resource guide will also demonstrate the interconnectedness of Quechua and Andean cultures, knowledge systems, and the Quechua language (Runasimi).

The guest speakers featured in this resource guide will discuss their relationship to the following themes - storytelling, music, visual art, and Runasimi. The overall goal of this project is to showcase the breadth of Indigenous knowledge, particularly through a mosaic of community perspectives.

The project will be unveiled in July 2022. The resource guide is of interest to researchers, students, members of the Quechua and Andean diaspora, and anyone who is interested in learning more about the Library’s collections.

View: Project Video - A.B. Bejar, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Analisa Caso, Simmons University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled, Music Section
• Collections Access: Enhancing Discovery of Musicians Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

The Music Section of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) circulates braille, large-print, and recorded musical materials to those with low vision, blindness, or other disabilities that may prevent them from using regular print materials. 2022 Junior Fellows Analisa Caso and Margot Cuddihy worked on projects in order to facilitate access to NLS materials both about and created by blind and visually impaired musicians. Analisa’s project consisted of enhancing the metadata in the NLS catalog called Voyager by applying Library of Congress Subject Headings and Demographic Terms to improve access to resources related to blind musicians. It included creating a report providing recommendations for how the Music Section could apply Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT) and Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) to enhance discovery of works about and created by blind musicians and an Excel spreadsheet listing the titles to which these terms and headings could be applied. Including these headings and terms in the catalog is important to the collection, so that researchers and patrons can easily identify records pertaining to blind and visually impaired musicians. As a future information professional, Analisa hopes to use this experience to create intentional platforms of accessibility and access, especially in special collections, archives, and libraries.

View: Project Video - Analisa Caso, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Katie Colson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Law Library of Congress
• Making Metadata Work ~Enhancement and Remediation of In Custodia Legis

The Law Library of Congress’s blog, In Custodia Legis, is such a fantastic resource because of its many wonderful contributors and resources, and because it is described with effective metadata, which identify key points, and creates connections. Junior Fellow Katie Colson’s project is working to ensure the blog metadata is up-to-date in areas like accessibility and continues to work effectively. The accessibility aspect deals with alt text inputs for media, which ensure all the content of a post is communicated. The metadata work primarily involves reviewing how existing fields and terms were being used, and how these could be adjusted or changed to create a better experience for the end user.

Katie has worked to connect patrons to resources from both the reference desk, and collection services, and while both are essential, she plans to work to create metadata that can be used to build a web of information that can lead people to information they did not know they needed, or even existed. This project will help her career by providing more experience in managing a collection of this size and level of metadata implementation.

View: Project Video - Katie Colson, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Natalie Coté, George Washington University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Digital Collections Management & Services Division
• Ensuring Access to Rights Restricted Digital Collections

In 2002, the Library purchased an electronic resource collection of 255 journals from the international magazine distributor, DIRSA. These journals, published primarily in Spanish and Portuguese, document the 21st century governmental, scientific, and socio-cultural activities of countries and municipalities across Latin America. In the last four years, The Digital Collections Management & Services Division (DCMS) has made 18,000 issues accessible via Stacks, the library’s access platform for rights restricted content. However, a number of problems were identified including file naming discrepancies and inconsistent title and issue enumeration metadata. These obstacles have illuminated the need for a more intensive discussion into the standardization of best practices when acquiring and processing electronic resource collections from vendors. As such, DCMS Junior Fellow Natalie Coté, in collaboration with Amy Snyder, conducted a comprehensive review of the DIRSA collection’s item-level metadata. Title inconsistencies, mislabeled issues, and missing volumes are problems that can hinder a patron’s ability to locate and utilize the library’s materials. By collecting data on the scope and nature of these inconsistencies across both Stacks and the DISRA access platform, BiVir, this project seeks to ensure that the Library of Congress’s rights restricted digital holdings remain accurate, complete, and accessible.

View: Project Video - Natalie Coté, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Margot Cuddihy, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Library Collections and Services Group
• National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled; Music Section
• Collections Access: Leading Blind and Visually Impaired Musicians

The Music Section of the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled (NLS) circulates braille, large-print, and recorded musical materials to those with low vision, blindness, or other disabilities that may prevent them from using regular print materials. 2022 Junior Fellows Analisa Caso and Margot Cuddihy worked on projects in order to facilitate access to NLS materials both about and created by blind and visually impaired musicians.

Margot supported this effort by creating a targeted guide to resources in the NLS Music Section’s collection, aiming to increase discoverability and promote the use of these materials by musicians, researchers, and others. The first part of this guide is a bibliography of biographical resources, and the second is a catalog of titles composed by and/or featuring blind and visually impaired musicians. Accessibility is crucial in building diverse, equitable, and inclusive library spaces. The accessible format and nature of materials included in this guide help it to serve as a resource not only about blind and visually impaired musicians, but for the NLS community as well. Additionally, the guide aims to empower NLS patrons to engage with and contribute to the musical canon.

View: Project Video - Margot Cuddihy, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Andrea Decker, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Asian Division
• Winning Hearts and Minds: Malay and Indonesian Titles

The Asian Division holds publications in Bengali, Chinese, Indonesian, Malay, and Urdu from the Franklin Book Program (FBP) — a Cold War-era book publishing program that supported translating almost 3,500 books from English into at least ten other languages between 1952 and 1978. Junior Fellow Andrea Decker inventoried 65 Malay and 198 Indonesian titles from the program as part of a larger effort to make Library of Congress’s Franklin Book Program (FBP) collection more discoverable. Decker received scans of FBP Malay and Indonesian titles, inventoried them using her language expertise, and identified the corresponding titles of the original English publications. She assisted the Library of Congress Jakarta Overseas Office in creating records by searching for pre-existing records and collecting metadata on each title. Decker also researched the history of the FBP in Malaysia and Indonesia to further understanding of the motivations behind Cold War-era cultural diplomacy as well as how intellectuals, translators, publishers, and artists in nations like Malaysia and Indonesia reinterpreted and reimagined program goals. To engage audiences and promote discovery of Indonesian and Malay titles, Decker will share her findings in a 4 Corners of the World blog post and a research guide on the FBP.

View: Project Video - Andrea Decker, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Elizabeth Dinneny, University of Maryland

• Library Collections and Services Group
• National Audio-Visual Conservation Center
• Online Exhibit Curation: American Archive of Public Broadcasting. The AIDS Epidemic and Public Broadcasting

2022 Junior Fellow Elizabeth Dinneny created an exhibit focused on public broadcasting’s coverage of the AIDS epidemic as represented in the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) collection. AAPB’s publicly accessible online reading room holds more than 80,000 programs for researchers, educators, and general audiences to explore. Public broadcasting’s mission to equitably provide information to Americans sets it apart from other forms of media. In crises where news is inflected by misinformation and prejudice, public broadcasting aims to maintain its commitment to factual information. This AAPB HIV/AIDS epidemic exhibit offers historical context and analysis that guides readers through the vast collection of materials related to the epidemic. Programs in the collection include NewsHour coverage of medical developments and activist demonstrations, local programming aimed at dispelling myths of HIV and AIDS, and debates about government and community response. As many doctors and researchers insist in interviews and special programs, the most important tool for combatting HIV infection is education. These broadcasts demonstrate public broadcasting’s commitment to educating the public during a crisis felt both nationally and locally. The exhibit will be a resource for anyone interested in learning about the role of public broadcasting in covering the highly politicized epidemic.

View: Project Video – Elizabeth Dinneny, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: AAPB Website external link

Catherine Discenza, University of Florida

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Geography and Maps Division
• Mapping the Historical Demographics: Race and Inequality

Using historical census maps, maps produced independently by other researchers, and information gleaned from historical newspapers, Catherine Discenza’s project will culminate in the production of a Story Map detailing racial and economic inequality in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Further, this project will connect the historical findings to modern issues pertaining to race and inequality, with case studies of Baltimore, New Orleans, and Tampa. Catherine’s primary tasks on this project included gathering historical sources and creating the content for the Tampa case study. The project was inspired by other work being done by the Geography and Maps Division in support of the U.S. House Select Committee on Economic Disparity and Fairness and Growth.

View: Project Video - Catherine Discenza, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Web Application external link

Anika Fenn Gilman, Tulane University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Geography and Maps Division
• Mapping the Historical Demographics: Race and Inequality

This project focuses on the work by cartographers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States. Collections including Census Statistical Atlases, maps and charts produced by Ida B. Wells and W.E.B. Du Bois, and redlining graphics from the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation demonstrate how historical mapping techniques illustrated racial disparities during this period. Examining the legacies of these inequalities, Anika aim to create an online Story Map that traces geographical exemplifications of inequality. She looked at broader representations, such as changes over a 50-year span in Census depiction of population density by race. Anika also researched more specific demographics, like mapping occurrences of lynchings across the country. Additionally, she created case studies of redlining in New Orleans, Tampa, and other cities. Through the lens of the legacy of redlining, Anika examined the long-term environmental, income, and housing impacts on several urban environments. The Story Map will be available to researchers, Congressional staff, and the general public to present historical legacies of inequality and racial discrimination.

View: Project Video - Anika Fenn Gilman, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Web Application external link

Mateo Gonzalez, Baldwin Wallace University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Science, Technology, and Business Division
• Hispanic Americans in Business and Entrepreneurship

2022 Junior Fellow Mateo Robert Gonzalez assisted his project mentor in creating a library guide on “Hispanic Americans in Business and Entrepreneurship.” Mateo worked in the Science, Technology, and Business Division of the Library of Congress while researching past and present Hispanic American entrepreneurs, labor unions, industry associations, and much more. Throughout history, Hispanic Americans have fought through systemic racism, immigration laws, poor working conditions and low wages. Despite these setbacks, Hispanic Americans have been the fastest growing business demographics in the US in recent years. In his guide, Mateo highlights many Library resources and gives descriptions on many different economic issues facing Hispanic American businesses in order to understand the history, current growth, and potential development in underrepresented areas. He has a personal connection to this topic because of his own Puerto Rican heritage. Mateo also wrote blogs about Hispanic Americans in the world of business and entrepreneurship.

View: Project Video – Mateo Gonzalez, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Kendall Henry, Georgetown University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Collections Management Division
• Carvalho Monteiro Collection

Kendall Henry worked in the Collections Management Division to help locate and digitally reunite books belonging to the Carvalho Monteiro Collection of 30,000 volumes. Carvalho Monteiro (1848 – 1920) was a Brazilian-born Portuguese businessman, philanthropist and entomologist who discovered many plants and insects in Brazil and Portugal. His library focused on Portuguese culture and history, and the library became an important source material on art and architecture in a variety of languages. He also had a special interest in the flora and fauna of Brazil. His impressive book collection was sold to the Library between 1927 and 1929 with no acquisition list. Since 2012, almost 30 volunteers and interns have worked to find the books dispersed in the General Collections, identified by the acquisition stamp on the verso of the title page.

Passionate about archival work, Kendall continued this work by researching Carvalho Monteiro’s life to find clues, updating the Carvalho Monteiro Database with images of confirmed books and the LOC Bibliographic Database with the provenance, as well as compiling a list of potential matches to be researched later. Locating and digitally reuniting this collection provides access to researchers worldwide, allowing for a better understanding of Carvalho Monteiro’s life, Portuguese history, and book history.

View: Project Video – Kendall Henry, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Dan Hockstein, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Digital Collections Management & Services Division
• Strategic Planning and Updates for Digital File Formats

Under the Digital Collections Management and Services Division, Daniel Hockstein collaborated with co-fellow Mari Allison in updating and expanding user access to the Sustainability of Digital Formats website. This resource provides data for information and analysis of over 530 digital file formats, and yields an average of 40,000 users a month. As a Fellow, Dan created new pathways for discovery and access by updating web resource links. Dan also added affiliations between the technical Library of Congress format descriptions and other platforms-- like the UK National Archives’ PRONOM database and Wikidata’s repository of linked data. Additionally, he performed research on file formats currently undergoing changes in adoption and standardization, such as the Matroska media container and FFV1 video codec. Whereas previous work focused on internal use of the Formats site, this summer, the Fellows’ central project consisted of research related to better understanding the needs and expectations of users external to the Library. Through this work, Dan and Mari attempted to understand how to better benefit power users as well as new and underserved digital preservation communities. Their collaborative work and research contributed to the broader digital preservation community and assisted with the upkeep of the Libraries’ strong digital connectedness and engagement.

View: Project Video – Dan Hockstein, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Sustainability of Digital Formats website

Cassidy Loft, St. Lawrence University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• African & Middle Eastern Division
• Investigating African Language Poetry Amid Multilingual Complexity

Cassidy Loft’s 2022 Junior Fellow project involved working with the African section of the African and Middle Eastern division to work on Uncovering Poetry in African Languages. The main goal was to help create a database/thesaurus of words relating to poetry in African languages in order to make this poetry more accessible. In order to create a source that easily identifies words relating to poetry in various African languages each language along with a language code is needed. Cassidy was able to connect her work done here with the Library of Congress with her time spent with the National Museums of Kenya as an intern conducting research in public history throughout various departments this past spring of 2022. During her time with the National Museums of Kenya, the connection between language and cultural identity was reiterated time and time again. Through this project, this connection has once again been echoed through the sociolinguistic components of this project including the various dialects, vernaculars, and alternative names for languages based on ethnic grouping, region, and more.

View: Project Video – Cassidy Loft, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Mariah Marsden, The Ohio State University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• National Audio-Visual Conservation Center
• Online Exhibit Curation: American Archive of Public Broadcasting, “Stories of the Land: Diverse Agricultural Histories”

The American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB), a collaboration between the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) and WGBH in Boston, is a digital initiative devoted the preservation of public media recordings. Local broadcasting stations and producers from communities across the country have contributed over seventy years of radio and television programs to the AAPB, which serves as a central repository and online platform through which the public can access this content. Mariah E. Marsden joins this project as a 2022 Junior Fellow tasked with curating an online exhibit to showcase a selection of their holdings that explore a specific topic of current and enduring concern. Her exhibit focuses on the AAPB’s expansive collection of agricultural material, highlighting local and diverse voices that complicate dominant narratives about farm life in the United States. From the struggles of Black farmers in North Carolina to an exploration of alternative bush farming in Alaska, the stories documented by public media provide important local histories worth recognizing. Ultimately, this exhibit invites the public to consider how we have imagined and talked about agricultural work: what experiences have been centered, what histories have been obscured, and the role of public broadcasting in shaping our perceptions.

View: Project Video – Mariah Marsden, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: AAPB Website external link

Olivia Meehan, Pratt Institute School of Information

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Digital Collections Management & Services Division
• Diving into Our Digital Ephemera: Enhancing Access to the Library of Congress Web Archives

As a 2022 Junior Fellow, Olivia Meehan is working with the Web Archiving Team in the Digital Collection Management and Services Division to improve the identification of websites preserved in the Library of Congress Web Archives that are no longer available on the live web. For more than 20 years, the Web Archiving Program has been preserving web content selected by subject specialists from around the Library. More than 29,000 web archives are publicly available on loc.gov with descriptions of the items and the collections to which they belong. Many of the archived websites in the Library’s collection are no longer published or maintained on the live web, but there is no established method for identifying which sites are still online, especially at scale. Determining and communicating the status of individual websites can help enable discovery of content that supports the study of web history, increase engagement with the web archives, and highlight the ephemeral nature of the web.

View: Project Video – Olivia Meehan, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Anna Katherine Overstreet, Mississippi State University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Preservation Research and Testing Division
• Preservation: External Climate and Internal Building Climates

2022 Junior Fellow Anna Katherine Overstreet performed quantitative analysis using historical data of DC-area weather and years of interior building climate data. This analysis aids in describing the relationship between the local climate and its effect on the interior microclimates of the Library and its spaces, and the conclusions from the analysis can be used within the Library and other cultural heritage institutions in caring for materials requiring climate-controlled facilities. Changes in interior microclimates, such as changes in humidity, can be detrimental to heritage materials. For example, excessive humidity can accelerate the breakdown of many materials and can cause mold growth, while low humidity can cause problems with materials’ brittleness. These analyses focused on relationships between decades of recorded temperature, relative humidity, and barometric pressure in the interior microclimates and the exterior climate from the same time period, which could help institutions understand how climate change is affecting their care of materials. The main tools used to conduct theses analyses include R and Excel. The interior data was provided by Preservation, Research and Testing Division (PRTD) monitoring sensors used in various locations throughout the Madison and the Jefferson Buildings. Deeper analysis was undertaken to understand the relationship between the rooms’ location within the buildings and the effect of the exterior climate on the rooms’ microclimate.

View: Project Video – Anna Katherine Overstreet, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Alexandra Ptacek, Arizona State University

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Preservation Research and Testing Division
• Preservation: External Climate and Internal Building Climates

2022 Junior Fellow Alexandra Ptacek worked with the Preservation Research and Testing Division (PRTD) and co-Fellow Anna Overstreet as part of the Preservation: External Climate and Internal Building Climates project. This project expands on current understanding of interior climate conditions at the Library of Congress while accounting for the effect of external weather fluctuations through predictive models that can be shared with institutions that have more limited resources. Preliminary analysis used environmental monitoring data managed by the PRTD from working, storage, and exhibits spaces as well as historic meteorological data from the NASA Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER) Project. Early statistical findings of significant, though weak, positive correlations support our understanding that external weather conditions affect internal microclimates, but it also identifies the need for multivariate analysis to determine the exact effect of confounding factors including building efficiency and resulting time delay that may confuse readings and their relationships. Ptacek focused on identification of such time delays (humidity and thermal lag) at the Thomas Jefferson Building while aiming to produce a model that addresses this lag and can be use by other institutions to better inform their own climate control concerns and protect collections from damage.

View: Project Video – Alexandra Ptacek, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Emily Rocha, University of Arizona

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Researcher & Reference Services Division
• Research Guides for Genealogy

2022 Junior Fellow Emily Rocha is in her second year of a Master of Library and Science degree via the University of Arizona. Her career interests are in government archives and anything research related. Her personal interest is in genealogy, so she was excited to be assigned to the Local History and Genealogy section at the Library of Congress for the 2022 Junior Fellowship Program. This section provides reference assistance to patrons seeking to uncover their family history. One way to help patrons navigate the Library’s resources is through research guides, a web resource that displays available materials by subjects of interest. For Emily’s project over this summer, she transitioned and updated legacy guides to the Lib Guide format the Library of Congress currently uses. This task increases discoverability of resources by converting static PDFs to interactive webpages. For this project, she created the guides German Immigrant Arrivals and Nordic and Scandinavia Emigration to the United States from the existing PDFs, as well as added new resources found by searching the Library catalog.

View: Project Video – Emily Rocha, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Amy Snyder, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Digital Collections Management & Services Division
• Ensuring Access to Rights Restricted Digital Collections Junior Fellows Project

Junior Fellows Amy Snyder and Natalie Coté worked on making information from the DIRSA collection of electronic journal issues more accessible and discoverable in Stacks, the Library’s platform for rights-restricted content. In partnership with the Library, the international magazine distributor DIRSA hosts an access platform called BiVir, which allows library guests to access thousands of journal issues from various countries in Latin America. Prior to the Fellows’ involvement, the Library received a hard drive containing a copy of all purchased content from BiVir which they processed and uploaded into Stacks. Amy reviewed PDF files from both Stacks and BiVir to document discrepancies between issue level metadata, volume enumeration, and title level catalog record metadata to ensure accuracy. The master list Amy created helped DCMS staff to identify issues or journal titles not already in Stacks so they could request those missing PDFs from DIRSA to complete the digital collection. These 18,000 issues cover political, scientific, artistic, and economic topics, highlighting the importance of preserving the titles due to the breadth of the collection’s intellectual scope.

View: Project Video – Amy Snyder, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Monica Soto, University of Denver- Morgridge College of Education Online

• Library Collections and Services Group
• Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division
• Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections

Interconnecting Worlds: Weaving Community Narratives, Andean Histories & the Library’s Collections seeks to connect the language, history, and culture of indigenous communities with each other and to materials available through the Library of Congress. Many of the materials in the Library’s collection that are related to Andean resources and languages are not discoverable, simply because of the specific knowledge required to search for these resources. This project involves compiling, sorting, annotating, and presenting items both inside and outside the Library’s collection, as well as creating new forms of resources through interviews with members of the community. The culmination of this project, the publishing of a Research Guide, will allow for scholars and community members alike to engage with indigenous materials and narratives. By making these resources more discoverable and creating a space for personal stories to be shared, this project hopes to provide a deeper understanding of existing indigenous knowledge and the bonds of shared kawsay yachay (culture).

View: Project Video – Monica Soto, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Office of the Librarian

Kimberly Grossett, The Catholic University of America

• Office of the Librarian
• Informal Learning Office
• Library of Congress Youth Center

The Informal Learning Office (ILO) is developing content for a new, 5,700-square-foot experiential learning space in the Youth Center in the Jefferson Building. The exhibition space will be opening in the next few years as part of a new group of visitor elements. This will be a user-driven, hands-on participatory space for intergenerational families and school groups with a target audience of 9- to 13-year-old visitors.

The focus of the activities in the space will be introducing young visitors to using the Library of Congress collections for their own creative purposes and research in four designated zones: Text, Film, Sound, and Images. Young visitors may explore the collections held at the Library by participating in a discovery box where they will work with items from the collection to solve a puzzle or answer a research question about a topic of their choice. Ultimately, young researchers may contribute to a community wall where they can share what they have learned with other visitors. Kimberly Grossett has developed content for and piloted test materials for the Images zone, similar to the pilot testing currently taking place for the discovery boxes in the Young Readers Center Program Lab. This involved sharing materials with young visitors asking them to complete a short survey about their experience with the materials and activities.

View: Project Video – Kimberly Grossett, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Melanie R. Holmes, Howard University

• Office of the Librarian
• Professional Learning & Outreach Initiatives Office
• Connecting Educators with Powerful Primary Sources – Reporting the Revolution: Teaching the Black Freedom Struggle through Newspaper Archives

2022 Junior Fellow Melanie R. Holmes’ project “Reporting the Revolution: Teaching the Black Freedom Struggle through Newspaper Archives” demonstrates how Chronicling America, an online newspaper archive available on the Library of Congress website, can facilitate teaching various stages, influences, and individuals of the longstanding African American fight for racial justice.

As part of the library’s Connecting Educators with Powerful Primary Sources initiative, this project will present newspaper articles from the 19th and 20th-centuries on three distinct topics: slave resistance, Pan-Africanism, and contributions of Black women.

The project will begin with an empowering perspective of slavery by showing how Blacks often revolted against their captivity, as documented within predominantly mainstream newspapers.

Next, the project will move to the 20th century and highlight the achievements of Pan-African leader Marcus Garvey. Using articles from Chronicling America, this project aims to position Garvey as a key figure in the legacy of Black Power leadership due to the massive success of his organization, the Universal Negro Improvement Association.

Lastly, this project seeks to honor the contributions of Black women in the Black freedom struggle. Articles of journalist Ida B. Wells and civil rights leader Ella Baker will be used to emphasize the vast educational opportunities of Chronicling America in this section.

View: Project Video – Melanie R. Holmes, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Ava Kaplan, Pratt Institute

• Office of the Librarian
• Literary Initiatives Office
• Enhancing Online Engagement for the 2022 National Book Festival: Tagging for Discovery and Access

To enhance digital engagement in the lead up to the 2022 National Book Festival, the Literary Initiatives Office is reimagining how attendees explore Festival events on the website. There will be a schedule-filtering feature where users can explore the wide array of festival programming by categories such as date, location, topic, genre, and tags. 2022 Junior Fellow Ava Kaplan’s project was to create a vocabulary of descriptive keywords and phrases for the tags facet. Tags are used in library catalogs and social media to classify content in user-initiated, accessible ways. Ava researched what tags would not only best reflect the diverse Festival content, but also encourage online users to interact with the schedule. The tag facet provides new pathways for discovery. Tags such as “Climate Change,” “Social Justice,” and “Authors-of-Color” enrich the description of events and demonstrate the inclusion of underrepresented audience groups. People will be able to intuitively browse the Festival schedule based on what interests them and what they identify with. This project demonstrates how semantic tagging has applications outside of metadata for online repository catalogs. When applied to library outreach and programming, tags can help present content to reach wider audiences.

View: Project Video – Ava Kaplan, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Ellie Kaplan, University of California, Davis

• Office of the Librarian
• Professional Learning & Outreach Initiatives Office
• Connecting Educators with Powerful Primary Sources: Exploring Disability History

2022 Junior Fellow Ellie Kaplan worked with the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office (PLOI) to develop primary-source based resources on disability history. She searched through a range of Library of Congress digital collections, including historical photographs, the Chronicling America newspaper archive, Congressional records, and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting, all of which are publicly accessible to educators. These resources focus on moments of self-advocacy and community building among disabled people. They also add a disability perspective to Library materials that may not have traditionally been considered through that lens. Having sets of resources across multiple times and places in American history will help educators better integrate stories of disabled people and disability issues in their instruction. Ellie shared these resources through the Library’s Teaching with Primary Sources Teachers Network, which reaches over 225 partner organizations and almost 13,000 educators. This project contributes to PLOI’s larger effort to improve disabled Americans’ engagement with the Library and supports the teaching of disability history in classrooms. A post describing the project in more detail will appear on the Teaching with the Library of Congress blog.

View: Project Video – Ellie Kaplan, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Tatiyana Lewis, Mount Holyoke College

• Office of the Librarian
• Office of Communications
• Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections Division

2022 Junior Fellow Tatiyana Lewis created a visual presentation mapping the presence of Black Women Intellectuals in the Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection. Daniel Alexander Payne Murray was a prolific historian, bibliographer and served as the second African American assistant librarian at the Library of Congress. Known for being an expert on Black literary and social achievement, Murray crafted a preliminary list of African American authors that was published in 1900 by the Library for the Paris Exposition, which became the first bibliography. The purpose of this project is to research the collection and list, highlighting the works and lives of two lesser-known 19th century Black Women Intellectuals to re-affirm the inescapable importance of making visible the narratives of Black Women in the academic archive.

View: Project Video – Tatiyana Lewis, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Khrisma McMurray, Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis

• Office of the Librarian
• Informal Learning Office
• Content Development: Library of Congress Youth Center

The Informal Learning Office exists to connect kids, teens, and families to the collections and resources of the Library by developing programs, resources, and learning spaces that inspire them to use the Library for their own creative purposes. During her internship, Khrisma McMurray contributed to the content of the new Southwest Corridor, a new 5,700 square foot experiential learning space in the Library of Congress’ Thomas Jefferson Building. The Southwest Corridor will be a user-driven, flexible, and participatory space for intergenerational family groups and school groups, with a focus on ages 9-13. While visitors of all ages will be given the chance to open-explore curated replicas of Library collections, visitors will also have an opportunity to dive deeper by exploring discovery boxes, which will be a core component of the experience. In her role, Khrisma developed content for a prototype of two primary source “quest/discovery boxes” based on the Library’s vast collection.

View: Project Video – Khrisma McMurray, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Eugene Parrish, Virginia State University

• Office of the Librarian
• Office of Communications
• Daniel A.P. Murray Pamphlet Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections Division

During Reconstruction, the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments were passed, giving rights to African Americans for the first time in US history. These amendments set the stage for an unprecedented event for Black men to be involved politically by running for office and voting. With Materials from the Rare Books and Special Collections Division and the Daniel Murray Pamphlet Collection, Junior Fellow Eugene Parrish’s project will show excerpts of documentation of Black Political Power documented in the Library of Congress by Daniel A.P. Murray. Murray himself was involved in politics and influenced local Black politics by being a Washington DC socialite. This project will also include the fall of Black Political Power after the passing of Jim Crow laws in the South.

View: Project Video – Eugene Parrish, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Cesar R. Reyes, San Jose State University

• Office of the Librarian
• Signature Programs Office
• The National Book Festival

2022 Junior Fellow Cesar R. Reyes working out of the Signature Programs Office set out to create a digestible video series in two parts. First, for the American Library Association (ALA) conference to focus on the Day in the Life of three individuals from different sectors of the Library of Congress (LOC). The hope was to create a video series that looked beyond the books, beyond the buildings to the people that make the Library so successful. By asking in-depth questions, we get to gleam these individuals’ stories to the building and just what’s it like for them at the LOC. The second video series for the National Book Festival, was developed by Cesar Reyes and co-Fellow Drew Robertson where they interviewed key members to create marketing material around the 2022 theme, “Books Bring Us Together.” The intention to focus on questions around books, their relationships and connections to not only ourselves, but also those around us.

View: Project Video – Cesar R. Reyes, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Behind the Books: A Day in the Life of an LOC Employee (Elmer Eusman external link, Angela Kinney external link, and Dani Thurber external link)

Drew Robertson, Mercer University

• Office of the Librarian
• Signature Programs Office
• The National Book Festival

In order to highlight this year’s National Book Festival theme, “Books Bring Us Together,” Junior Fellow Drew Robertson’s project is to bring a continuous story booth to the Festival called “Minerva’s Mosaic: Stories created by diverse voices from across the nation”. This booth will be an opportunity for National Book Festival attendees to work together to create unique stories that will be published on the National Book Festival website. “Minerva’s Mosaic” will enhance attendee experience by providing a hands-on activity that will connect festivalgoers of all ages from across the nation. In her pursuit of degrees in both journalism and creative writing, Drew has come to understand the power stories – whether fact or fiction – hold in connecting people. Drew’s desire for this project is to emphasize the potential storytelling, writing, and books have in bringing us together.

View: Project Video – Drew Robertson, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Office of the Chief Information Officer

Megan Bauerle, Wesleyan University

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Japanese Americans’ Pursuit of Higher Education under WWII Incarceration

Within the Digital Strategy Directorate, the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) Enhancing Access: Higher Education project focuses on using digital sources from the Library of Congress to engage with the higher education history of communities of color in the United States. Supporting the CCDI's mission, 2022 Junior Fellow Megan Bauerle created a Story Map about incarcerated Japanese Americans’ higher education experiences in the 1940s. Library materials used feature the Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers and the Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers collections. The Japanese-American Internment Camp Newspapers collection contains 29 newspaper titles in both English and Japanese, digitally documenting the life of incarcerated Japanese Americans. Additionally, articles from the Chronicling America collection report public reactions to Japanese American students in college. Under a War Relocation Authority policy, a qualified student could leave an incarceration center to attend college. The Story Map created explores newspaper reports on the struggles and successes of individuals pursuing higher education. General audiences will contemplate how higher education impacts communities and institutions. This project will give the public a look into the extensive Library newspaper collections and increase interest in higher education's role in Asian American history, inspiring further research into higher education history for underrepresented communities.

View: Project Video – Megan Bauerle, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Cailee Beltran, University of Texas at El Paso

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Memories of the Fields: Mexican Migrants in the Imperial Valley 1935-1944

Cailee Beltran is a recent graduate in History from the University of Texas at El Paso. Her research is concerned with the U.S.-Mexico borderlands and their histories of migration and labor. She worked with the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative on the project “Enhancing Access: Libraries, Archives, and Museums.” Users in the Farm Security Administration (FSA) /Office of War Information Black-and-White negatives digital collection will find a pictorial record of American life between 1935 and 1944. Photographer Dorothea Lange visited the state of California under the assignment of documenting white Dust Bowl Refugees from the Midwest. However, many of Lange’s images focus on Mexican and Mexican American laborers working in the fields of the Imperial Valley. Using the ARC GIS Story Map platform, Cailee created a memory project that centers on the experiences of Mexican and Mexican American fieldworkers photographed by Lange during the Great Depression and FSA migrant camps. Despite racial strictures, Lange sought to capture the injustices of California’s agribusiness and bring awareness to BIPOC working in the fields. Through digital storytelling, Cailee examined and contextualized the selected images to construct a narrative representing Mexican and Mexican American communities that have historically been overlooked in the collection.

View: Project Video – Cailee Beltran, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Alondra Ceballos, Texas A&M University

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Vitality in Mexican Colonia: Water Sources for Mexican Settlement in San Antonio, Texas, March 1939

Alondra Ceballos’ research concerns itself with the repatriation and deportation Mexicans and Mexican-Americans faced in San Antonio, Texas during the Great Depression between the years 1929 and 1939. The cotton boom at the earlier part of the 1920s led many farmers to support the admittance of Mexican agricultural workers into the country. There was a change of sentiment during the economic depression that led to the preservation of jobs for white Americans. Mexican workers were encouraged or at times coerced to return to Mexico. Their status as temporary workers were voiced by local elected officials when Mexican workers refused to leave and still remained in the United States. Colonias, Mexican and Mexican American rural settlements, increased in numbers and size in the Southwest. LOT 591 in The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division titled San Antonio, Texas. March, 1939. Housing conditions in Mexican quarter collected by Russell Lee for the Farm Security Administration on March, 1939 depicts a Mexican Colonia that managed to reside in San Antonio during this time. Alondra tracked the community’s access to clean water sources in order to determine a possible unequal distribution of water. Water was transported from the city in barrels and wells were drawn from the Edwards-Trinity (Plateau) Aquifer. In narrowing down her research to water sources and water storing techniques used by a Mexican Colonia in San Antonio, Texas, she expanded the narrative of the Great Depression by including the adversity faced by Mexican immigrants in the Southwest borderlands.

View: Project Video – Alondra Ceballos, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Camille Dantzler, Ph.D., Howard University

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Buy the Route: Black Labor Ecologies of the Dantzler Plantation

Camille Dantzler is a 2022 Junior Fellow within the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI). Dantzler’s research project is a genealogical and historiographic work charting Black labor systems through experiences of enslaved Africans of the Dantzler plantation in Orangeburg County, South Carolina from the Civil War through WWII in the Americas. Informed by autoethnographic study as a descendant of the enslaved on the Dantzler plantation, utilization of these archival resources, as a product of what remained, is a reconstructive meditation on sites of historical memory. Dantzler’s (re) membering of Library of Congress archive draws from Chronicling America, Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories and Born in Slavery, Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 collections, and other relevant cites such as Mississippi State University and the University of South Carolina archives. This Story Map assembles newspaper, photography, audio-visual material, legal and business records, and interviews to foreground histories of racism, slavery, freedmen, Black codes, liberation, and labor. This research interrogates the complexities of evolving Black labor and its ecological imprints on industrial expansion and genealogical lineage.

View: Project Video – Camille Dantzler, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Roger Davis Jr., University of Mississippi

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Improving Access and Opportunity: An Exploration of African American Higher Education Experiences in the South

While working in the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) with the Enhancing Access: Higher Education project, 2022 Junior Fellow Roger Davis Jr. created a digital Story Map titled “Improving Access and Opportunity: An Exploration of African American Higher Education Experiences in the South.” Higher education has long been regarded as a pathway to social mobility and the expansion of a community's socioeconomic benefits. Until after the Civil War, African Americans were virtually prohibited from obtaining higher education in the United States. Throughout the years, higher education has undergone considerable changes, notably in the South. Substantial success has been made in improving the presence of Blacks among undergraduate and graduate students in higher education institutions. A Story Map was used to depict the progression of African American high school graduates' access to higher education and their experiences of integrating institutions in the South. Creating diverse, equitable, and multicultural learning environments has been a top focus for higher education institutions for the past 50 years, and it remains one of the most important challenges on campuses today.

View: Project Video – Roger Davis Jr., Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Cara DeCusatis, University of Maryland

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Design Division
• Effective User Research at the Library of Congress

Effective user research continues to be an important activity at the Library of Congress to better understand our user communities and our employees. This summer, 2022 Junior Fellow Cara DeCusatis worked in the Office of the Chief Information Officer conducting user research as part of the IT Design and Development directorate. In her role as Junior Fellow, Cara was actively involved in conducting user research and applying best practices to help realize a goal in the Library’s strategic plan of being user centered. Cara and her project mentor Libby Bawcombe conducted a research study where they connected with different types of people who submit files to the Library — whether those files are publications, multi-format cultural collections, visual media or other materials. The goal of this research was to gain a greater understanding of the submission process in order to improve the submission tool and make it more user-centered. This is a part of a larger initiative to modernize the submission processes for a variety of users and materials in Digital Library Services. This modernization aims to improve the user experience of sending materials to the Library, in addition to streamlining the internal steps to receive, process, store and present materials.

View: Project Video – Cara DeCusatis, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Ghazal Ghazi, University of Oklahoma

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Digital Strategy Directorate
• Unraveling ‘Ishq’: Love in the Poetry, Miniature Painting, and Calligraphy of the Persianate World

Ghazal Ghazi’s 2022 Junior Fellow project in the Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) highlights the intersections of poetry, calligraphy, and miniature paintings as Persianate vessels for the centuries-long multifaceted explorations of passionate love (ishq), in both its sacred and human manifestations. Rooted in Islamic mysticism (tasawwuf), Sufi poets exemplify devotion to the divine Beloved grounded in madhhab-e ‘ishq, or the path of love. Expressing terrestrial desires, some poets lament human love or recall the star-crossed romances of folk tales. Other poets insist on ambiguity as to the divine or human nature of the beloved. Spotlighting archives from the Library’s Persian Language Rare Materials collection, this project locates the transregional nature of Persian culture throughout the expanse of Central, South, and West Asia, using critical analyses to both push beyond modern nationalist conceptions of identity while also disarming Orientalist approaches to the literature. Starting from the medieval era, the digital Story Map charts how poets and artists unravel the threads of love as they dialogue across time and space, mapping this restless devotion through the vernacular of their intersecting and overlapping artistic disciplines.

View: Project Video – Ghazal Ghazi, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.

Matthew Savage, University of North Carolina at Greensboro

• Office of the Chief Information Officer
• Project Management Office
• The Foundations of the Project Management Office

Over the course of the 2022 Junior Fellows Program, Matthew Savage generated reports and refined the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for the Project Management Office (PMO). The PMO provides tools, processes, and training which aims to standardize and optimize Project Management practices (ADD SOP). Matthew applied the goals of the PMO by creating new SOPs which will allow future project managers fellows to follow the established project management guidelines and produce a superior product for their stakeholders. The Project Management Office enforces and maintains quality control standards for project reporting and ensures that the Library of Congress maintains the high bar that is expected of a prestigious institution. From tracking budgets to managing risks, these reports influence the daily goals of hundreds of staff and contribute to the current and future well-being of the Library as a professional entity, which serves the interests of the entire nation.

View: Project Video – Matthew Savage, Summer 2022 Junior Fellow, personal statement.