Transcription and Tagging: The Library of Congress Will Launch Crowdsourcing Program Next Week

From the “The Signal/a Library of Congress Blog:

We’ll launch a crowdsourcing program at the Library of Congress on October 24. We’re asking everyone to join us as we improve discovery and access across our diverse collections through transcription and tagging. The program is grounded in what we’ve learned through our previous experiences with participatory projects at the Library, including image description in Flickr and our newspaper captioning pilot Beyond Words.
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The new crowdsourcing program exemplifies the [recently published] strategic plan and the charge of the Digital Strategy. Specifically, it was developed with user-centered design principles that emphasize cultivating trust and approachability as a compliment to the authoritative role the Library of Congress plays in American memory. It is data-driven and carefully designed in dialogue with the key takeaways of previous Library of Congress participatory projects.
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Part of our promise to the public has been to develop in the open from the start of the project. In the coming weeks, we’ll have a more focused view of the agile software development process and the ways we’ve been developing the transcription and tagging tool Concordia. We’re sharing the GitHub repository with you now while we get the final touches on the launch version of the application. If you’re interested in adopting Concordia, reach out to crowd@loc.govor make an issue in GitHub. We’d love to learn about your project!
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In tandem with the strategic moves described above, the Library of Congress Labs team has joined the Digital Strategy Office, which is led by the Director of Digital Strategy Kate Zwaard. You can still find us at //labs.loc.gov!. Our work remains focused on connecting people with our collections and we have expanded our scope to support the Digital Strategy through ongoing experimentation and evaluating impact. We continue to center people, focus on reducing barriers in process and inclusion, and learn from our colleagues in the Library of Congress and peers elsewhere tackling similar challenges.
We’re delighted to introduce you to three new staff members who are leading this effort: Lauren Algee, Elaine Kamlley, and Victoria Van Hyning. Together, they form a team of Community Managers and will steward interconnected pieces of the crowdsourcing practice from embedded positions across the Library of Congress focusing on engagement, collections, and software development.

Learn More, Read the Complete Blog Post (approx. 1150 words)

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