Volume 31, No. 21 LIBRARY May 29, 2020 GAZETTEOF CONGRESS A weekly publication for staff Plan Released to Restore Operations BY WENDI A. MALONEY A methodical, step-by-step plan for restoring operations on-site at the Library has been mapped out, Library leaders announced during an all-staff virtual town hall meeting on Wednesday. The plan involves three phases with six parts and seeks to reduce the risk of exposure to the COVID-19 coro- navirus in Library buildings. The first phase will launch when local conditions related to the pandemic allow, probably sometime in mid- Junior fellows logging on from home on Tuesday included Randi Proescholdt (from June. left), Digital Collections and Management Services; Lupita Partida, Hispanic Division; Patty Templeton, Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division; and “Your cooperation is going to be Selena Qian, Office of the Chief Information Officer. vital in making sure that as we go through this restoration of on-site operations … we all remain as Library Welcomes Junior safe and as healthy as we can,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Fellows — From a Distance Hayden. The 2020 class will collaborate across four time Other speakers at the town hall were Mark Sweeney, principal zones and 22 states. deputy Librarian of Congress; Ed Jablonski, the Library’s chief BY MARK HARTSELL ships not with the usual early operating officer; Sandra Charles, morning trip to the Madison Build- chief medical officer; Joe Cappello, For nearly 30 years, the Junior ing for orientation but instead by acting director of the Human Capi- Fellows Summer Intern Program waking up, making breakfast, stay- tal Directorate; Elizabeth Scheffler, has given college undergraduate ing home and logging on. director of Integrated Support Ser- and graduate students a one-of- a-kind opportunity: the chance to For the next 10 weeks, they will vices; and April Slayton, director of toil away at workstations that communications. do hands-on work at the world’s largest library and to experience have been social distanced in the The restoration-of-operations plan everything the nation’s capital has extreme, scattered across four is based on guidance from author- to of fer. time zones and 22 states from itative health sources including the Connecticut to California. Office of the Attending Physician Because of the COVID-19 pandemic that has forced the Library of Con- On July 22, the term will culmi- for Capitol Hill, the Johns Hopkins nate with another program first: University Center for Health Secu- gress to close to the public, the Library this summer offered the a virtual display day, transforming rity and the Centers for Disease what has been a one-day public Control and Prevention, Sweeney positions in a new way — as virtual internships, a first for the program. exhibition of the fellows’ work into said. an online presentation of videos The plan’s three phases include So, on Tuesday, this year’s cohort illustrating their efforts. The intern- of 40 fellows began their intern- OPERATIONS, CONTINUED ON 7 JUNIOR FELLOWS, CONTINUED ON 6 NOTICES DONATED TIME LIBRARY The following employees have satisfied eligibility requirements to receive leave GAZETTEOF CONGRESS donations from other staff members. Contact Lisa Davis at (202) 707-0033. loc.gov/staff/gazette Craig Andrews Sharron Jones APRIL SLAYTON Sharif Adenan Terri Harris-Wandix Executive Editor Lynette Brown Donna Williams MARK HARTSELL Eric Clark Publications Editor WENDI A. MALONEY Writer-Editor CONTRIBUTING EDITORS RECORDS MANAGEMENT AWARENESS COURSE REMINDER Deanna McCray-James, calendar Kia Campbell, Moving On The Records Management Basic Awareness 2020 training course is available Lisa Davis, donated leave through LOC Learn (https://bit.ly/2LWftj0). All Library staff, contractors and vol- PROOFREADER unteers who handle Library records are required to take the course by Sept. George Thuronyi 11. It should take about one hour to complete. DESIGN AND PRODUCTION Under Library of Congress regulations (LCR 5-810), all Library personnel must Ashley Jones take the course annually, and new personnel must take it within 30 days of MISSION OF THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS their start date. The Library’s central mission is to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American For questions about the course’s content, contact [email protected]. For tech- people with a universal and enduring source of nical assistance, contact [email protected]. knowledge and creativity. More information about records management: https://go.usa.gov/xwCWf ABOUT THE GAZETTE An official publication of the Library of Congress, The Gazette encourages Library managers and staff to submit articles and photographs of general interest. Submissions will be edited to BY THE PEOPLE ANNOUNCES NEW STAFF CAMPAIGN convey the most necessary information. The Library’s first-ever staff-only transcription program — By the People’s Back issues of The Gazette in print are available Theodore Roosevelt campaign (https://go.usa.gov/xwCDn) — has already in the Communications Office, LM 143. Electronic archived issues and a color PDF file of the current logged nearly 15,000 pages of transcribed and reviewed content. Now, By issue are available online at loc.gov/staff/gazette. the People is launching a second campaign approved for staff telework: “War Diaries of George S. Patton” (https://go.usa.gov/xwCDd). Questions? Contact GAZETTE WELCOMES LETTERS FROM STAFF Staff members are invited to use the Gazette for [email protected]. lively and thoughtful debate relevant to Library issues. Letters must be signed by the author, whose place of work and telephone extension should be included so we can verify authorship. If a letter calls for management response, an DIGITAL LEARNING PROGRAM COMING SOON explanation of a policy or actions or clarification of fact, we will ask for management response.— The Digital Strategy Directorate is launching the Digital Library of Congress Ed. Learning Program in June to offer staff opportunities to expand their digital skills and get hands-on experience with new digital tools. A six-week cur- Library of Congress Gazette riculum will include staff-led workshops and online talks. The directorate will Washington, DC 20540-1620 Editorial: Mark Hartsell, 7-9194, [email protected], also host virtual small groups around the Library to share digital techniques or Wendi Maloney, 7-0979, [email protected] and brainstorm new digital approaches to the Library’s work and engagement Design and production: Ashley Jones, 7-9193, with Congress and the public. To register to lead or facilitate a program, go to [email protected] ISSN 1049-8184 https://bit.ly/36o4msq. Questions? Contact Laurie Allen at [email protected]. Printed by the Printing Management Section GAZETTE DEADLINES BUILDING ACCESS UPDATE The deadline for editorial copy for the June 12 Gazette is Wednesday, June 3. The C Street West doors are closed as of May 4 at the request of the U.S. Cap- itol Police to support its workforce during the pandemic. Staff should enter Email editorial copy and letters to the editor to [email protected] and [email protected]. and exit Library buildings through the Independence Avenue doors or the Madison Building garage. To promote events through the Library’s online calendar (www.loc.gov/loc/events) and the Note that from May 29 through June 12, the Second Street entrance to the Gazette Calendar, email event and contact information to [email protected] by 9 a.m. Madison Building garage will be closed for barrier replacement. Enter and Monday of the week of publication. exit the garage during this time on First and C Street. Normal operations will resume June 13. Boxed announcements should be submitted electronically (text files) by 9 a.m. Monday the week of publication to [email protected] and [email protected]. 2 MAY 29, 2020 NEWS Data Jam Offers Sneak Peek into Millions of Historical Images Innovator-in-Residence Ben Lee is extracting visual content from historical newspapers. BY SAHAR KAZMI Soon, more than 100 million images from the Library’s Chron- icling America collection — one of the largest datasets of visual con- tent ever produced from a cultural heritage collection — will be made available on loc.gov thanks to Ben Lee. He is one of two partici- pants this year in LC Labs’ Innova- tor-in-Residence program. On May 7, Lee and the LC Labs team held a virtual “data jam” to give the public a first look at Newspaper Navi- Shawn Miller gator, the image recognition and exploration project Lee created. Ben Lee looks through historical newspapers at the Library in February. Using a machine-learning algo- more than 130 digital humanities providing new exploratory avenues rithm, Newspaper Navigator pin- practitioners and included con- to complement keyword searches points photographs, maps, head- tent experts from the Chronicling of the imagery. It will include a lines and other imagery across America team who introduced the searchable user interface to allow the more than 16 million pages of scale and scope of the expansive the public to easily explore and historical newspapers included in newspaper collection. download visual content. Chronicling America. The algorithm The data jam demonstrated the Because the Newspaper Navi- took 19 days to run through the first phase of Newspaper Navigator gator dataset, along with all of entire collection, ultimately identi- — prepackaged sets of visual con- the code written to produce it, is fying approximately 10 terabytes of tent that can be downloaded by being released by Lee in the public images and related metadata. defined parameters, such as con- domain, the project is primed to “By extracting visual content from tent type or publication date. Along open even more doors for search the digitized newspapers, Ben’s with photographs and illustrations, and discovery among the Library’s project is creating a first-of-its- the datasets include comics, edi- and other digital humanities col- kind opportunity to surface new torial cartoons, headlines, maps lections in the future.