APPLICATION

Apply for this program on USAJOBS.gov: https://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/830071200

Please refer to the How to Apply brochure here: LIR25 How to Apply

INFORMATION SESSIONS

Learn more about this year's Librarians-in-Residence Program at one of the upcoming Information Sessions:

1. Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 4:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here: https://loc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_A1XczEP-TLOPv9scMay1EA
2. Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Register here: https://loc.zoomgov.com/webinar/register/WN_Itt1KVxBRhazf5wj0VRuww

PROGRAM INFORMATION

In support of developing the next generation of librarians and information professionals, the Librarians-in-Residence program will give early-career librarians the opportunity to gain meaningful work experience in at least one track of the following: Acquisitions and Collection Development; Archives and Special Collections; Cataloging and Metadata; Collection Preservation; Community Engagement; Digital Services; Reference and Instruction; and Systems and Standards. Not every track will be offered each program year. Please refer to the list below and the USAJOBS.gov Vacancy Announcement for the most current offerings.

The Library of Congress is offering 8 positions for the 2025 program. The program begins June 16, 2025 and ends December 12, 2025. There is an optional 4-month extension to April 10, 2026.

Participants will be expected to serve onsite at the Library’s Capitol Hill campus for the duration of the program. Telework is determined by each division, so the number of telework days served will vary.

PLACEMENTS

Below are the tracks and placements for the 2025 program.

1. Archives and Special Collections: Researcher and Collections Services/General and International Collections Directorate/African and Middle Eastern Division. The African and Middle Eastern Division (AMED) provides access to collections of unmatched depth and breadth documenting the literatures, cultures and histories of regions extending from the southern tip of Africa to the Mediterranean coast, across the Middle East to Central Asia, and to the Indian Ocean Islands. With the support of a significant grant from the Lilly Endowment, the LIR in AMED will join an exciting initiative on enhancing public understanding of the religious cultures of Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The LIR will support the division’s program to catalyze conversation, discovery, and learning around the multiple, complex religious cultures of Africa and the Middle East and their diaspora communities in the U.S. and around the world. They will contribute to greater discovery and access to the Library’s collections through working with unprocessed materials, supporting the creation of new digital collections, and creating online collections-based resources. Additionally, they will participate in efforts to improve the Researcher Experience, onsite and online, contributing to efforts to reach new and underserved audiences, as they also help respond to traditional research and reference questions in person, via telephone, online through Ask-a-Librarian, and via the reading room reference desk. The LIR will also participate in public outreach and engagement efforts such as writing blog posts, co-developing and supporting public programs, and co-providing instructional programs. Advanced proficiency with an African or Middle Eastern language (such as Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Ge’ez, Georgian, Hebrew, Kiswahili, Oromo, Persian, Somali, Tigrinya, Turkish, or Turkic Central Asian) is preferred but not required.
2. Cataloguing and Metadata: Discovery and Preservation Services/Acquisition and Bibliographic Access/U.S. Arts, Sciences, and Humanities Division/Science, Technology & Medicine Section. The LIR’s duties will include working closely with Science, Technology & Medicine Section staff to catalog various materials in an automated cataloging environment where the bibliographic characteristics of the material are relatively easy to determine and cataloging decisions are made within established standards. Specific projects the LIR might assist with include: searching entries in manual and automated catalogs, assigning headings to catalog entries, selecting and assigning classification numbers; establishing personal and corporate names and uniform titles for inclusion in name authority files, establishing and recommending subject headings for inclusion in the subject authority file and classification schedule; creating and revising bibliographic records, authority records, and classification schedules; performing content designation of bibliographic and authority records, performing research in the cataloger’s reference collection, online databases, the world wide web, and the collections of the library; and recommending resolutions to problems and inconsistencies in the cataloging process.
3.  Collection Preservation: Discovery and Preservation Services/Preservation Directorate/Preservation Services Division. The LIR in the Preservation Services Division of the Preservation Directorate will work on projects, assignments, and tasks across the directorate, on collections management, general collections conservation, preservation services and contracting. “Collections Management” relates to the standard techniques used to organize and maintain collections: conducting an inventory of collection items, creating finding aids and documentation for the collection, maintaining the security, ensuring proper handling, assessment and review of the collections. This will predominantly be performed via participating in the Stacks Survey project. “General Collections Conservation” pertains to the treatment and housing of general and reference collections. Treatment activities focus primarily on general and reference collections, where damage to items has been identified through use. The LIR will be trained in the care and conservation of the collection and work on projects that integrate various aspects of treatment and surrogate workflows. “Preservation Services and Contracting” includes learning about and assisting with major external service contracts, e.g., Binding Processing and Preparation. The LIR will gain knowledge and understanding of the Preservation Databases structure and assist with the maintenance of the Library’s Master negative microfilm collection. The LIR will also work with the Preservation Directorate’s Director on various projects. The activities include Preservation Web page improvements, participating in outreach events, and performing research. The LIR will participate in outreach efforts such as writing for the directorate’s blog, Guardians of Memory, and researching and providing answers to the “Ask Librarian” inquiries (individually and/or as part of a team).
4.  Community Engagement: Researcher and Collection Services/Special Collections Directorate/Rare Book and Special Collections Division. With financial support from the Aramont Trust Fund, the LIR will focus on outreach and engagement with modern and contemporary art in the Aramont Library and Related Book Arts Collections in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division (RBSCD) at the Library of Congress. In private hands for over forty years, the Aramont Library is an assemblage livres d’artiste, a corpus of material that includes many of the major artists of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. These range from the early post-Impressionist work of Pierre Bonnard and Henri Matisse to the Fauvist revelations of George Rouault and André Derain. From the geometric Cubism of George Braque and Jacque Villon to the Surrealist visions of Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, RBSCD also holds one of the largest Book Arts Collections in the United States. This collection plots the chronology of the modern letterpress and book artist tradition, including most major printers of the last century. The LIR in RBSCD will work directly with the Chief of the Division to create new RBSCD resources (LibGuides, StoryMaps, blog posts, etc.) about these collections. They will also collaborate with RBSCD staff to create public programming about these collections, including (but not limited to) hands-on workshops, pop-up displays, and virtual and/or in-person talks. During their time at the Library of Congress, the LIR will gain relevant experience in public outreach and community building in relation to arts collections. They will also gain valuable skills managing project workflows, including event coordination and networking with regional arts organizations and creators.
5.  Digital Services: Discovery and Preservation Services/Digital Services Directorate/Digital Collections Management Services Division/Digital Content Processing Section. The LIR in the Digital Content Processing Section of the Digital Collections Management & Services Division, Digital Services Directorate, Discovery & Preservation Services Unit is expected to work on projects, assignments, and tasks in the areas of digital content management, metadata management, and web archiving. For digital content management, the LIR will assist efforts to process new or legacy general digital collections for online access by following documented workflows including downloading files, performing quality control activities, interacting with Library systems to load processed digital content in preservation systems for online access, and coordinating work with colleagues across the Digital Content Processing Section. The LIR will focus on processing freely available electronic publications such as publications previously acquired by the Library in print and open access electronic books. For metadata management, the LIR will assist efforts to enhance descriptions for new or legacy general digital collections by following documented workflows including cloning print bibliographic records or updating electronic bibliographic records as appropriate to enable online access to the digital content and creating and registering persistent handles.  For web archiving, the LIR will assist efforts to assess archived websites for completeness by following documented workflows with a particular focus on freely available electronic journals.
6. Digital Services: Researcher and Collections Services/General and International Collections Directorate/Serial and Government Publications Division/Digital Collections Services Section. The LIR in the Digital Collections Services Section (DCSS) of the Serial & Government Publications Division (SER) will support the General & International Collections Directorate’s (GICD) Digital Collections Development Group. The project focus will be on working with Recommending Officers (ROs) and other stakeholders on creating a deeper understanding of, evaluating, and recommending born-digital items for multiple streams of digital collection acquisition. Working with group members in GICD and subject matter experts across the Library, the LIR will help facilitate focus group discussions to build an understanding of the current digital collections lifecycle and infrastructure, and perform a gap analysis to assess what parts of the recommending and acquisition workflow are missing or could become more efficient. They will assist in drafting initial observations and recommendations around selection, description, and curation of digital collections to establish a framework for electronic acquisitions. As part of the recommendations, they will assist in writing guiding documents for ROs within GICD, who recommend materials for acquisition to the Library’s collections. The LIR will also help map out unique digital acquisitions workflows within the five divisions of GICD and contribute to documentation that guides the divisions in implementing recommendations.
7. Digital Services: Researcher and Collections Services/Special Collections Directorate/Manuscript Division/Preparation Section. The LIR in the Preparation Section of the Manuscript Division, within the Special Collections Directorate, is expected to work on projects, assignments, and tasks related to born-digital collection material. The scope of the residency involves engaging with technical strategies for acquisition, processing workflows for a variety of media and file types, and analysis of born-digital collections for access. Acquisition tasks could include working with the division’s digital workflow coordinator (senior archives specialist) to capture files from cloud storage, personal computers, hard drives, and other donor sources. Processing assignments could include the full range of the division’s born-digital workflow: media inventory, bagging of digital files, archival and technical appraisal, and long-term preservation storage, as well as secondary workflow for problematic media and formats. This work would involve use of a variety of digital forensic and processing tools and, depending on the applicant’s capabilities, coding and scripting for bulk processing and building out processing capacity. The LIR may also engage with the ongoing investigation of workflows appropriate for processing and making available email archives found in multiple division collections, including the papers of Senator Joseph I. Lieberman. Analysis of born-digital collections could include review of the division’s currently available born-digital collections for the purposes of making connections across collections and enhancing understanding of possible approaches to born-digital research. The LIR may also engage in cross-divisional collaboration with other born-digital practitioners and contribute to the Manuscript Division’s blog Unfolding History.
8. Reference and Instruction: Law Library of Congress/Global Legal Research Division/Public Services Division. The LIR in the Public Services Division of the Law Library is expected to work on projects, assignments, and tasks in the areas of research and reference services, collection management, and consultation/liaison services. “Research and reference services” includes staffing the Law Library Reading Room reference desk and responding to legal and legislative research and reference questions in person, via telephone, and electronically. The LIR will also work on developing and maintaining legal research/reference LibGuides. The LIR may also work on complex legal research/reference assignments (individually and/or as part of a team). “Collection management” includes using standard techniques to organize and maintain collections. Representative tasks in collection management include government documents inventorying, creating finding aids and documentation for law collections, maintaining the security of the collection, ensuring proper handling of the collection, and collection assessment and review. The LIR can expect to work on collections including web archives, digitized collections, print collections, unique collections, and/or electronic databases. “Consultation/liaison services” includes tasks such as giving tours of the Reading Room; attending staff meetings, briefings, and tours; providing research and reference consultations by appointment; and supporting the Law Library’s instructional services and programs. The LIR may also participate in outreach efforts such as writing for the Law Library’s blog, In Custodia Legis; writing articles for the Law Library’s online publication, the Global Legal Monitor; and providing legal research/reference instructional programs (individually and/or as part of a team).

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Participants will select their first- and second-choice placements in the application. After a review of applications, selecting officials will contact prospective candidates for interviews and make preliminary selections. Successful candidates will submit paperwork for a mandatory background check.

Participants receive on-the-job training and undertake assignments that contribute to the ongoing mission and work of the Library. They participate in enrichment assignments and receive mentoring from seasoned professionals. They are also expected to participate in Library-wide activities, such as the National Book Festival, and to provide information sessions concerning their professional interests to Library staff as well as report back to their graduate programs on experiences as Librarians-in-Residence.