The Library has appointed Seattle-based artist and developer Vivian Li as its 2025 innovator in residence.
For her project, “Anywhere Adventures,” Li will work with Library staff to highlight unique, amusing and awe-inspiring collection items that enable young researchers to discover the Library’s online resources about their own communities.
Through her popular social media series about the Seattle Fremont Bridge in 2023, Li found others who shared her enthusiasm for entertaining and informative stories about local history.
“With the Library of Congress so far away, I thought it surely wouldn’t have anything for me — but when I started exploring the digital collections, I found so many stories about my town,” Li said.
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Li is an illustrator, comics artist and web developer. Since graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in computer science, she has been creating projects that combine her visual artistry with her coding skills.
She previously served as an artist in residence creating digital data visualizations for Seattle’s historical Fremont Bridge in a partnership between the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Department of Transportation.
Li published the first volume of her comic cookbook on homemade Chinese cuisine, “ABC Cooking,” in 2023. She has contributed comics to Papeachu Review, Fogland Press and Portland Zine Symposium.
The Innovator in Residence program is an initiative of the Library’s Digital Innovation Division, LC Labs. The program invites arts and technology practitioners to conduct research with Library staff members and demonstrate new ways to engage with archives in the cultural heritage sector.
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.
