Listen Online: A Conversation with Jer Thorp, Innovator-in-Residence at the Library of Congress

From CBC Radio in Canada:

On November 8th, Canadian data artist, Jer Thorp, took over the Twitter feed of the US Library of Congress for several hours.
Thorp is the Innovator-in-Residence at the Library of Congress, where he’s charged with finding new ways to use and explore the massive online collection.
There are hundreds of millions of archival materials in the library’s digital collection, both in physical objects that have been scanned, and digital-only material. But Thorp thought visitors were losing the experience of stumbling upon unexpected things, usually associated with getting lost in the physical stacks of books.
“We need to think about how digital…can engage with those ideas,” Thorp told Spark host Nora Young. “What I was trying to push against was that this metaphor of being lost in the stacks – you’re always lost in the stacks alone – but I know from my personal experience…[as a child]…it wasn’t about being alone at all…it was actually a really social experience.”
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Jer Thorp has a podcast about the Library of Congress. His book, Living In Data, will be published in 2020.

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See Also: Library of Congress Appoints Innovator-in-Residence Jer Thorp to Second Term (July 9, 2018)m\

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