the National Jukebox at the Library of Congress represents one of the largest online collections of early-twentieth-century acoustical sound recordings. Since its initial launch in 2011, the National Jukebox has grown to include more than 16,000 recordings from the Victor, Columbia, and Harmony labels, made up of contributions from organizations…

How can novel AI techniques be made and put to use in the library? Combining methods from data and library science, this article focuses on Natural Language Processing technologies, especially in national libraries. It explains how the National Library of Sweden's collections enabled the development of a new BERT language model for Swedish. It…

The Associate Fellowship Program (AFP) at the National Library of Medicine (NLM), a post-graduate training residency for early career librarians, incorporates a curriculum component introducing participants to the operational areas of the NLM. Recent organizational shifts catalyzed a curriculum evaluation to examine its alignment with the mission…

The Reading Seed Programme (RSP), an in-house literacy program inaugurated by Sarawak's State Library (PUSTAKA Negeri Sarawak, Malaysia), has the potential to become the country's primary literacy initiative, particularly in terms of fostering a reading culture. The purpose of this paper is to empirically establish the reliability of survey…

This article provides an account of the making of KBLab, the data lab at the National Library of Sweden (KB). The first part discusses the work involved in establishing a lab as both a physical and a digital site for researchers to use digital collections at previously unimaginable scales. The second part explains how the lab has deployed the…

The digitization of library and archive collections over the last two decades has enabled efforts to reform history education through the integration of primary sources. Currently the Library of Congress provides one of the largest digital collections of its kind. The authors' project, with support from the Library, provides social studies…

At the 2023 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference, the International Relations Committee, Americas Subcommittee invited panelists from academic, research, and public libraries to discuss various ways of sharing Indigenous-made materials from the United States and Latin America in the panel, "Sharing Knowledge: Projects and…

Technology has had a profound impact on how we listen to, create, and perform music. Among the Library of Congress' collections are wax cylinders, photographs, manuscripts, recordings, and more that document the evolution of sound technologies. Students can use these sources to assist them as they respond to and analyze music in all its historical…

February 12, 1924, is a landmark date in the annals of American music. The story of that snowy afternoon in New York has become almost legendary -- and the tale has undoubtedly become embellished in its telling and retelling over the past 100 years. The occasion was a concert titled "An Experiment in Modern Music," presented by Paul…

The aim of the large-scale research entitled "Exploring Documentary Heritage for Building Synergies between Research and Society" is to investigate previously unexplored aspects of the documentary heritage, including the part of the legacy that has previously been subject to censorship and has therefore not been studied in depth. In…

Currently "Big Data" is an emerging field that presents several Information Technology challenges regarding the capture, storage search, structure, and visualization of this data. The real challenge for organizations is to find ways to extract value from it and provide better services to their clients. The data generated in academic and…

The story of John Henry, dating back to the late nineteenth century, is one of the most enduring folktales of American culture. As the legend goes, John Henry was an African American "steel-driving man" whose job was to drive spikes through rocks in the construction of a railroad tunnel. So powerful was John Henry that he defeated a…

It is difficult to overstate the power of visual images, particularly historical primary source photos, to provide a window into the past. Here, the authors outline how educators can utilize historic photos to provide students with a deeper understanding of the past. When students do not see their heritage and culture represented in images, the…

The Digital Talking Books Program was developed between the 1990s and the 2000s to replace the Analog Cassette format, which had been developed during the 1960s to allow people with disabilities to access reading material. The Digital Talking Books Program was built around flash memory technology. The reasons for which the National Library Service…

Jointly released by OCLC and the Library of Congress, this white paper compares and contrasts the compatible linked data initiatives at both institutions. It is an executive summary of a more detailed technical analysis that will be released later this year. The white paper summarizes the recent activity of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative…