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Internships and Fellowships

Display Day 2021

Welcome to the Junior Fellows Program Display Day 2021

For the past 30 years, the Library of Congress has convened the Junior Fellows Program to support emerging professionals (undergraduate and graduate students) to gain career experience by working with analog and digital collections and supporting the services of the world’s largest library. Under the direction of Library curators and specialists in various divisions, Junior Fellows explore digital initiatives and increase access to the institution’s unparalleled collections, programs and resources.

Display Day 2021 | A Virtual Experience

The Junior Fellows Program 2021 Display Day continues as a public presentation in a fully virtual format, due to the circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. The 42 interns selected for this year’s program have accepted the opportunity to participate remotely and share their work on the projects structured by different service units and divisions throughout the Library of Congress.

The 2021 Display Day showcases the work of emerging professionals and encourages public access to Library of Congress collections. The virtual approach reaches a wider national and international audience and assists to fulfill the mission of the Library of Congress.

The Junior Fellows Summer Internship Program has been a signature program of the Library of Congress since 1991. It is made possible by a gift from the late James Madison Council member Nancy Glanville Jewell through the Glanville Family Foundation and the Knowledge Navigators Trust Fund and by an investment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Michael Teresa Mellifera, Catholic University of America

Law Library, Digital Resources Division
Legal Report Archive
Historical Legal Reports from the Law Library of Congress

For nearly a century, the Law Library of Congress has produced thousands of research reports on a wide range of legal topics, with particular emphasis on foreign, comparative, and international law. Prior to the Legal Report Archive project, this trove of historical research and analysis was not easily accessible to users. Many paper reports lay hidden on shelves, while digital reports were buried in an internal shared drive, with no standard file naming convention, very little metadata enrichment, and existed in outdated file formats.  In late 2019, the Law Library began a multi-year effort to inventory, archive, and share many legal reports (both paper and born-digital) with researchers and other members of the public, resulting in significant growth of the Publications of the Law Library of Congress collection to over 1,600 reports, and the ongoing success of a crowdsourcing transcription campaign with By the People. During this fellowship, Michael Mellifera focused on developing an internal content management system to make non-public legal reports more discoverable so that foreign legal specialists could consult this institutional knowledge. As of July 2021, Michael has added 2,000 born-digital reports to Confluence, an internal collaboration workspace, and created new supplementary navigation systems and functionalities to boost accessibility.

View: Project Video – Michael Teresa Mellifera, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Joe Kolodrubetz, George Washington University Law School

Law Library, Global Legal Collection Directorate
Foreign Legal Gazettes

Joe Kolodrubetz joined the Digital Resources Division of the Law Library as a 2021 Junior Fellow to create metadata for the foreign legal gazettes digitization project. Legal gazettes are official sources of law printed by national and local governments throughout the world to announce decisions by courts, executive bodies, legislatures, and other authorities. Metadata includes two types of information: first, information used by the Library internally for cataloging, and, secondly, keywords used externally by researchers in conducting searches. During the fellowship, Joe read the previously scanned collections of Paraguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Haiti, and other nations, then created keywords to attach to the documents as metadata. Next, he helped clear documents for posting to the website, where the metadata can be collated and presented to the public. The collection includes documents from six continents and more than thirty governments, in more than ten languages, spanning back more than seventy years, on diverse topics of public and private law. By equipping the Library’s holdings of legal gazettes with metadata, Joe helped make the data contained in the gazettes accessible for research and historic preservation. He has also helped create priorities for data processing in years to come.

View: Project Video – Joe Kolodrubetz, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Jacob Kowall, Simmons University
Hilary Shiue, University of Maryland, College Park

Digital Collections and Management Services
Sustainability of Digital Formats Research

While working in the Digital Collections Management and Services Division, 2021 Junior Fellows Jacob Kowall and Hilary Szu Yin Shiue assisted in updating and expanding the Sustainability of Digital Formats website (the Formats site). This website provides information and analysis for over 500 digital file formats and offers guidance on the long-term preservation of digital content at the Library.

The Junior Fellows were responsible for maintaining the Library’s file format description documents (FDDs), which involved updating broken links and verifying accuracy. Based on collections data and user analytics, the Fellows recommended research priorities and provided updates to the FDDs’ most commonly used file formats. They performed cross-walking between the Formats site and the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority list of registered media types, and assisted in generating a user-friendly controlled vocabulary for Stacks (the Library’s interface for on-site viewing of rights-restricted digital content). Additionally, they thoroughly researched and linked FDDs with other authoritative resources such as Wikidata and PRONOM—the UK National Archives technical registry. The Fellows also improved the Formats site’s integration with international file format projects and assisted with providing current information on file formats to users at the Library of Congress and throughout the international digital preservation community.

View: Project Video – Jacob Kowall and Hilary Shiue, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic (LINK) | Infographic transcript

Emmeline Kaser, University of Michigan
Alex Reese, University of Texas at Austin

Digital Collections and Management Services
LC Rights-Restricted Digital Collection
The DOAJ/DMEP Openly Available eSerials Project

2021 Junior Fellows Alex Reese and Emmeline Kaser worked with the Digital Content Management Section (DCM) on the Openly Available e-Serials Project. DCM was formed in 2018 to support the acquisition and management of the Library of Congress’s rapidly growing digital general collections. This project supported DCM’s work with the Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate to expand the Library’s collection of e-serials through web archiving. In support of this effort, Alex worked to locate and gather information on freely available online issues of serials previously acquired in print through the Library’s Duplicate Materials Exchange Program (DMEP). Similarly, Emmeline reviewed e-serials in the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) to identify open access titles that the Library had previously acquired in print, focusing on smaller publishers that are less likely to submit titles through other acquisition methods. Alex and Emmeline’s combined efforts produced a selection of 250 freely available e-serial titles for potential acquisition via web archiving that represent the geographic and subject diversity of the Library’s collections.

View: Project Video – Emmeline Kaser and Alex Reese, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Karla Roig Blay, University of Texas at Austin

Latin American, Caribbean and European Division
PALABRA: Making Connections
Poesías e historias del Caribe: Mapping Caribbean Women Poets in the PALABRA Archive

2021 Junior Fellow Karla Roig Blay created a digital StoryMap of Caribbean women poets represented in the PALABRA Archive. This archive is a collection of approximately 800 audio recordings of 20th and 21st-century writers with Luso-Hispanic heritage, but Latin American women poets represent only ten percent of this collection. The narrative of the StoryMap focuses on the Caribbean region, with an in depth look into four countries: Puerto Rico, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Haiti. With materials from the Prints and Photographs Division, the Geography and Map Division collection, and the PALABRA archive, this project showcases excerpts of poems that delve into the struggles of heritage, identity and colonial history of the Caribbean region. A geographic dataset provides a detailed look into all the Latin American women poets in the archive, giving the public the opportunity to explore further and make their own connections.

View: Project Video – Karla Roig Blay, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Liam Josef Morrissey Sims, University of Pittsburgh
Sara Kittleson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Latin American, Caribbean & European Division
Swinging Cords and Literature Map
Self-Publishing from Brazil’s Margins: Literatura de Cordel

2021 Junior Fellows Sara Kittleson and Liam Sims worked with the reading room staff of the Latin American, Caribbean & European Division, to create the digital presentation titled “Self-Publishing from Brazil’s Margins: Literatura de Cordel.” The project highlights and contextualizes materials from the Library’s collections of Literatura de Cordel, a form of popular poetry from Brazil’s Northeast with colonial roots that remains popular today both in print and in a dynamic online environment. Using the StoryMap platform, Sara and Liam crafted a narrative that uses images and audio recordings to introduce Cordel literature, situate the tradition within the culture and history of the Brazilian Northeast, and explore themes such as urban migration. The project focuses on the self-published nature of Cordel and its evolving role in representing the culture of the Northeast. The Story Map serves as an accessible hub for the Library’s Cordel collections, while demonstrating how special collections and popular literature can expand and inform our study of people and cultures.

View: Project Video – Liam Josef Morrissey Sims and Sara Kittleson, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Pariti Sutaria, Rutgers University-Camden

Science, Technology, and Business Division
BEOnline+ Business Website Collection Review

Pariti Sutaria’s 2021 Junior Fellows project centered on BEOnline+, a database of over 1,200 selected websites on all aspects of business and economics. BEOnline+ was started by the former Cataloging Directorate (now Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate) in 1996 as an experimental project to organize online resources. BEOnline+ resources are maintained by the Business Reference Section in a database from which subject guides are generated. While it has been updated periodically, it was in need of a thorough review. Pariti supported this effort by identifying outdated websites and broken links, recommending additional online resources, reviewing subject areas in the collection, and meeting with library staff involved in maintaining the database. The project will also be used to document workflows and update policy guidance to inform future websites for inclusion, with the goal of having a curated list of recommended websites for researchers working on related topics.

View: Project Video – Pariti Sutaria, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Hannah Spring Pfeifer, Villanova University

Science, Technology and Business Division
The Rise of American Industrialists

2021 Junior Fellow Hannah Spring Pfeifer worked in the Science, Technology and Business Division to produce a blog series on notable American industrialists and their companies’ legacies and a LibGuide on starting non-profit organizations. The topics Hannah covered included the Du Pont family, pyrotechnics, and electricity. A key focus was George Westinghouse, Jr. and his myriad businesses advertised in a film series called The Westinghouse Works. She wrote two blog posts on Westinghouse—analyzing 21 films in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting, and Recorded Sound Division—to provide insight into the use of actuality films for business advertising and the role of these specific films in the growth of American industry. Her infographic includes information about the films’ content and categorizes the film scenes as they depict Westinghouse employees at work. This project allowed Hannah to embark on a deeper investigation of Gilded Age labor and industry’s role in American celebrations. Additionally, the fellowship gave her an opportunity to develop new digital history skills while working with and for the public.

View: Project Video – Hannah Spring Pfeifer, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Sean DiLeonardi, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Amal Charara, East Central University

Science, Technology and Business Division
Arithmetic, Numeracy, Literacy and Imagination

2021 Junior Fellows Amal Charara and Sean DiLeonardi worked with science, technology and business materials related to the history of arithmetic in order to examine how and why we count. Techniques of counting follow us everywhere, from the classroom to the counting house, yet much of the Business Division’s holdings on these topics from the 18th century to the present remain understudied. Together, Amal and Sean collected textbooks, business guides, and other documents to compose a research guide on the business history of arithmetic for the benefit of future researchers. Specifically, Sean’s research examined the proliferation of visual devices and memory aides—from flash cards to math poems—that made up an industry of imagination in the 19th century. Amal’s research followed the business of counting into the political arena to explore how scientists, mathematicians, and other professionals throughout the centuries count crowds of people attending major events, such as inaugurations of presidents. Estimating the number of people involves concepts such as numeracy, equations, density, and area. As Junior Fellows, they demonstrated how, throughout history, the business of arithmetic encompasses diverse skills—from numeracy to imagination—as well as diverse counters, from pupils to scientists.

View: Project Video – Sean DiLeonardi and Amal Charara, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Tania María Ríos Marrero, University of Washington iSchool
Joseph A. Torres-González, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Science, Technology and Business Division
Latin American Food Studies
Coffee in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Research Guide & ¡a la huelga todos! The 1942 Sugar Industry Strike in Puerto Rico: A Story Map

As part of the Latin American Food Studies Project of the Science, Technology and Business Division (ST&B), 2021 Junior Fellow Joseph A. Torres-González created “Coffee in Latin America and the Caribbean: A Research Guide,” will assist Library of Congress users interested in coffee in the aforementioned regions. This commodity shapes the lives of millions of people across the region in different ways, not only as a food staple, but as an item that has transformed the environment, the economies of the region, political processes, and culture. Joseph identified, organized, and annotated a selection of bibliographic, audiovisual, and photographic resources from the Library of Congress collections and other publicly available material. Joseph’s project illustrates the importance of exploring common foods to uncover deeper layers of research and understanding.

Tania María Ríos Marrero conducted research for the Latin American Food Studies Project and created “Memories of Movement: A Brief Account of the 1942 Sugar Strike in Puerto Rico.” Tania, a 2021 Junior Fellow, used digital storytelling to contextualize a selection of Farm Security Administration photographs taken in mid-twentieth century Puerto Rico. Working in collaboration with librarians in the ST&B Division and in the Hispanic Division, she used the ArcGIS StoryMaps platform to highlight the activities of a famous 1942 labor strike, and to draw connections between aspects of land use, food production, and social movement in Puerto Rico at the edges of the industrial and modern era. Her StoryMap provides a list of sources for further reading and engagement with these topics. Another part of her project was her collaboration in the Library’s web archiving initiatives. The sites she selected and nominated for preservation in the Food & Foodways Web Archive Collection focus on present-day land and food justice work in Puerto Rico.

View: Project Video – Tania María Ríos Marrero and Joseph A. Torres-González, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Kate Mitchell, Rutgers University
Alyssa Sarah Knapp, UCLA

Library Services, Office of the Associate Librarian for Library Services
Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound
Moving Image Section
The AAPB Online Exhibit Curation Project

Kate Mitchell and Alyssa Knapp worked with the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC) on the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) online curation project. The AAPB, a collaboration between the Library of Congress and WGBH in Boston, digitally preserves public television and radio programs created over the last 70-plus years and makes material from nearly 150 different stations accessible to the public. For the AAPB Online Exhibit Curation Project Junior Fellows, Kate and Alyssa each selected a topic for an online exhibition using the PBS NewsHour Collection. They curated relevant NewsHour segments wrote accompanying essays describing the NewsHour coverage of their topic, which provided context for the viewer. Kate’s project explores the NewsHour’s coverage of civil unrest in American between the 1990s and 2021, while Alyssa’s examines NewsHour coverage of the proxy wars of the Cold War. In addition to curating their online exhibitions, Kate and Alyssa also each created a special collection centered on a theme of their choice—drawing from many different programs across the AAPB. Kate’s collection highlights programs that capture the Asian-American and Pacific Islander experience, and Alyssa’s contains interviews with foreign leaders.

View: Project Video – Kate Mitchell and Alyssa Sarah Knapp, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Magdalene Jensen, Catholic University of America
Rebekah Bain, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Manuscript Division Reference and Resources
Web Metrics Analysis of the Presidential Digital Collections

The Manuscript Division holds the papers of twenty-three U.S. presidents. In 2020, the division completed their digitization, making all presidential papers accessible online. Rebekah Bain and Magdalene Jensen’s 2021 Junior Fellows project included two parts: performing an analysis on the web metrics of the Jefferson and Grant presidential papers, and creating a LibGuide using content from the digitized presidential collections to help remote researchers in their online search. Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, online accessibility has become critical in making the Manuscript Division’s presidential collections available for research. This data guided Rebekah and Magdalene’s decisions on the LibGuide creation, by acknowledging and incorporating the public’s searching preferences. Understanding the remote usage of these collections through a web metrics analysis is vital to continuing the division’s mission of promoting access to materials that document our nation’s heritage.

View: Project Video – Rebekah Bain and Magdalene Jensen, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Daniel Ng, University of Texas at Austin
Bennett Comerford, Harvard University

Library Services, General and International Collections
Asian Division
Franklin Book Program: Identifying Bengali Titles

The Asian Division serves as custodian for Asian language items in five of ten languages from the Franklin Book Program Collection (FBP) housed at the Library of Congress. Between 1952 and 1978, FBP assisted developing countries in the creation, production, distribution, and use of books and educational materials in vernacular languages. The program selected English materials about science, technology, poetry, and history, and had them translated into vernacular languages by authors and translators in those countries. The work completed by Daniel Ng and Bennett Comerford as 2021 Junior Fellows focused on the 331 uncatalogued Bengali titles in this collection and the promotion of their project via an entry for the Library’s Four Corners of the World blog.

View: Project Video – Daniel Ng and Bennett Comerford, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Sophie Vogelsang, Vanderbilt University

Preservation Research and Testing Division
New Ways to See Lighting and Fading Data

Sophie Vogelsang’s 2021 Junior Fellow project explored how data from fade-testing and lighting surveys can be effectively analyzed to provide new insights into the fading of objects under varied lighting conditions. Incorporation of data from LEDs and older light sources will facilitate future discussions around the use of different lighting systems in collections and exhibit spaces. Sophie developed data analysis methods that enable the calculation and visualization of colorimetric values from reflectance data as well as direct comparisons between microfade-testing (MFT) instrument light sources and lighting conditions from relevant settings. Light damage is a significant concern for long-term preservation and safe exhibition of collections items. The Preservation and Research Testing Division (PRTD) regularly performs non-destructive MFT to assess the light sensitivity of objects for exhibition. PRTD also collects readings of light levels and emission spectra in Library spaces to evaluate lighting conditions experienced by collections items. As many institutions including LC transition to LED lighting systems, establishing how items fade under LED light is important for collections care decisions. PRTD is one of the few institutions equipped with MFT instruments with both broadband xenon and LED light sources, enabling evaluation of an object’s fading under different light sources.

View: Project Video – Sophie Vogelsang, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Kimmy Chancellor, Texas A&M University
Heidi Vance, Northumbria University

Preservation Research and Testing Division
Preservation: Cataloguing & Characterization
Assessing the Physical Condition of the National Book Collection

Assessing the Physical Condition of the National Book Collection is an ongoing project within the Preservation Research and Testing Division of the Library of Congress. The project involves comparing the physical, chemical, and visual traits of multiple sets of “identical” books, each sourced from university libraries in varying regions of the U.S. The aim is to provide objective assessments involving analytical techniques that can be used as a reference point to determine a book’s overall stability and anticipate the areas of concern in a book’s inherent qualities. These analyses also seek to create a framework for institutions across the country to assess and qualify their collections and preservation needs going forward. During their time at the Library of Congress, 2021 Junior Fellows Kimberly Chancellor and Heidi Vance assisted in reviewing the data collected from multiple sets of five books (per set) from the late 19th century to see if any trends could be identified between the condition of the books and their traits; and what these trends can imply for the future conditions of the books. This review also allowed for comparisons to be made between book sets in order to determine the ideal handling and stabilization of certain books.

View: Project Video – Kimmy Chancellor and Heidi Vance, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View Heidi Vance: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

View Kimmy Chancellor: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Talia Lieber, University of California, Los Angeles

African and Middle Eastern Division
African Section Poster Collection

The African Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress holds a rich and vast collection of pamphlets and posters amassed over the last six decades from across Sub-Saharan Africa. The division’s pamphlet collection – including ephemera such as non-published materials, documents, government reports, press clippings, calendars, postcards, and memorabilia from elections and various campaigns on the African continent – was cataloged at a collection level in the 1990s. Talia Lieber’s 2021 Junior Fellows project aimed to organize and document a selection of the 700 posters from Africa so that their contents could be digitized and accessible to scholars, researchers, and members of the public. This project included scanning and sorting the posters, examining them for key identifying information and images, and preparing them to be housed in storage. Through this project these posters will be readily available to researchers and for future exhibits.

View: Project Video – Talia Lieber, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic (LINK) | Infographic transcript (LINK)

Shlomit Menashe, University of Maryland

African and Middle Eastern Division
Hebraic Section

New Technologies for Ancient Hebrew Texts 2021 Junior Fellow Shlomit Menashe increased the discoverability of 1,200 uncatalogued Hebrew prayer books by creating a detailed spreadsheet of information transformable into ILS records for the Library’s online catalogue. During the course of her work with prayer books from just about every corner of the world, Shlomit came across a Hebrew prayer book printed in 1823 in “Constantinople,” today’s Istanbul. Intrigued by the place of publication and its connection to her own family history, she decided to delve into the subject more closely. Under the guidance of Sharon Horowitz, Senior Reference Librarian in the Hebraic Section, Shlomit learned about the historical events that brought the Jews to the heart of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the 15th century and turned transformed the city it into a center of Hebrew printing for centuries to come. Shlomit’s work highlights this fascinating chapter in Jewish book history and draws from the rich collections of the Library of Congress in order to present it in its fullest possible context.

View: Project Video – Shlomit Menashe, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Amy Olson, Smith College

Collections Management Division
Carvalho Monteiro Collection

Amy Olson’s 2021 Junior Fellows project in the Collections Management Division helped locate and digitally reunite the 30,000 books in the Carvalho Monteiro Collection. Carvalho Monteiro (1848–1920) was a Brazilian-born Portuguese businessman, philanthropist and entomologist who discovered many plants and insects in Brazil and Portugal. His library focused on Portuguese culture and history and became an important source material on art, architecture, and decorative arts in a variety of languages. He also had a special interest in the flora and fauna of Brazil. His impressive book collection was sold to the Library between 1927 and 1929 with no acquisition list. Since 2012 over 25 volunteers and interns have worked to find the collection dispersed in the Library’s General Collections. Amy continued this work by researching Carvalho Monteiro’s life to find clues for the collection, creating a spreadsheet of future search options, and updating the Carvalho Monteiro Database and LOC Bibliographic Database with the provenance and images of confirmed books, including a collection of Voltaire’s work. Locating and digitally reuniting this collection is important for better understanding Carvalho Monteiro’s life, Portuguese history, and book history, and to make these materials available to future researchers worldwide.

View: Project Video – Amy Olson, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Yuqing Zhou, Rutgers University

Copyright Office, Office of Public Information & Education
Copyright Communication and Data Analytics
Creating a Data Driven Approach to Communication and Outreach

Yuqing Zhou’s 2021 Junior Fellows project involved working with the Office of Public Information and Education at the U.S. Copyright Office to assist with its communication and outreach efforts. The main goal was to conduct a data-driven evaluation to help the Office optimize its communication and outreach strategies. To support this effort, Yuqing extracted 2020 employment data provided by Bureau of Labor Statistics to 1) locate the types of creators and potential copyright holders in the United States at the state and sub-s tate levels, and 2) generate a five-year trend analysis (2015–2020) to identify where those creators and copyright holders were growing. Examining the target audience enables the Office to better refine its engagement approach as well as reflect the effectiveness of its current outreach efforts. Ultimately, this user center approach helps the Office to precisely target, understand, and serve its audience.

View: Project Video – Yuqing Zhou, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Abigail Jorja Tick, Syracuse University
Emily Zerrenner, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

LC Labs
Outreach and Audience Research

As 2021 Junior Fellows in the Digital Strategy Directorate with LC Labs, Abigail Tick and Emily Zerrenner researched audience engagement for Labs and expanded their knowledge of the role emerging technologies play in the cultural heritage sector. Abigail researched how current users engage with the Library's digital materials in innovative and creative ways while also discovering methods to connect with potential new audiences for LC Labs projects, initiatives, and programs. Abigail designed a social media campaign that broadens the reach of the Digital Scholarship Research Guide and brings more people to the Library’s resources, whether that be in-person or online. Emily researched federal challenges, which are incentive or prize competitions put on by government agencies. LC Labs’ previous data challenge helped increase access and understanding of congressional data; the division is interested in hosting another challenge to boost public engagement and bring awareness to the Library’s vast collections. Emily’s project will culminate with a recommendations report for LC Labs in addition to an annotated bibliography on her challenge research.

View: Project Video – Abigail Jorja Tick and Emily Zerrenner, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Joshua Ortiz Baco, University of Texas at Austin
Darshni Patel, George Mason University

Digital Strategy Directorate
Connecting Communities Digital Initiative

The Connecting Communities Digital Initiative (CCDI) recently launched as part of the Mellon-funded Of the People: Widening the Path program that aims to deepen the connection between the Library and communities of color in the U.S. Based in the Digital Strategy Division of the Office of the Chief Information Officer, CCDI is asking what untold stories emerge when we center the lives and cultures of people from ethnic and racial minorities across the Library’s wide-ranging collections. How can participants be best prepared to discover and reimagine materials in the Library’s digitized collections that are often underexplored but are invaluable to telling the stories that matter to them and their communities?

Josh and Darshni’s summer project provides the groundwork for answering these questions by drawing from on the vast experience of Library staff, that who have been developing these connections as part of their regular duties. At the same time, they the fellows developed a preliminary survey based on first-hand accounts of the kinds of projects and practices of developed by organizations that are currently engaging with LC materials or those that could benefit from including these digital collections as part of their own ethnic and racial cultural heritage work. Through the course of the investigation on behalf of CCDI, we hope to ultimately offer recommendations and suggestions to the newly emergent program for internal use. This project supports CCDI’s goal of leveraging innovative digital approaches and overlooked materials to help creators bring new audiences to the Library.

View: Project Video – Joshua Ortiz Baco and Darshni Patel, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Sarah Rounsville, University of Notre Dame
Shannon Sommers, Yale University
Sonia Kelly, College of William and Mary and University of St Andrews

Congressional Research Service, American Law Division
Constitution Annotated: Supreme Court Biographies

The Supreme Court Justice Project is part of the ongoing effort of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to modernize the “Constitution Annotated” site, the authoritative overview of how the Supreme Court has interpreted the U.S. Constitution throughout the nation’s history. Currently, the online Constitution Annotated’s Table of Supreme Court Justices identifies only the names, terms, appointing U.S. President, and noteworthy opinions for each Justice. CRS’s long-term plan for the table, is to link each Justice to a detailed personal biography that will contextualize the Justice’s jurisprudence in light of their personal background and the historical period in which they served and include pertinent images of or links to Library materials .

2021 Junior Fellows Sarah Rounsville, Shannon Sommers, and Sonia Kelly researched and drafted biographies of selected Supreme Court Justices, and identified relevant materials from the Library of Congress’s digital collections to supplement each biography. The three Fellows also investigated how the Library’s digital materials might enhance constitution.congress.gov and make the Constitution more accessible to college students.

View: Project Video – Sarah Rounsville, Shannon Sommers and Sonia Kelly, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Sam Correia, Simmons University

Office of the Librarian, Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement
Professional Learning & Outreach Initiatives Office
Primary Source Teacher Resources

2021 Junior Fellow Sam Correia worked with the Professional Learning and Outreach Initiatives Office to develop a resource for teachers that incorporates primary sources for the classroom. The focus of this project was to curate and analyze primary sources about women in the fields of science and technology. Sam conducted research in the online collections of the Library of Congress to find resources related to science, math, and technology. Special attention was given to how these primary sources can be used with students of various ages in a classroom. It is important to highlight the stories of female scientists and mathematicians, especially as stories of women throughout history have often been erased or overshadowed. However, in this primary source teacher resource, the emphasis is not so much on the individual identities of these women but their contributions to their fields. Content related to the resources was also written, including analytical questions, related resources, background information, possible activities, and suggestions for teachers. The result is a teacher resource that explores themes of collaboration, war industrialization, and visualization while incorporating primary sources that will be useful to educators in various fields such as science, technology, and history.

View: Project Video – Samantha Correia, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Morgan Gibbs, Ohio State University
Rae Enzie, Simmons University

Office of the Librarian, Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement
Signature Programs Office
Archiving the National Book Festival

In preparation for the 2021 National Book Festival, 2021 Junior Fellows Morgan Gibbs and Rae Enzie designed a project that would enhance the Library’s immensely popular annual event. The first part of their project featured an interactive webpage designed using the ArcGIS StoryMaps platform. Inspired by this year’s theme of “Open a Book, Open the World,” the map takes guests on a journey across the globe with a selection of the 2012–2021 National Book Festival’s featured books, with each book plotted according to its setting.

The second part of the project involved a collaboration with the Office of Communications (OC) to conduct an audit of the social media platforms used by the authors and presenters involved with this year’s festival. This audit will allow OC to fully utilize the reach of the authors’ social media presence when promoting the festival, and to engage with a wide range of people from across the United States and the world.

View: Project Video – Morgan Gibbs and Rae Enzie, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Finn Smith, Vassar College
Rachel Scott, SUNY Brockport
Echo Rue, University of South Florida

Office of the Librarian, Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement
Informal Learning Office
Resources for Intergenerational Learning
Outreach to Teens & Families with the Informal Learning Office 

2021 Junior Fellows Finn Smith, Rachel Scott, and Echo Rue worked in the Informal Learning Office on Resources for Intergenerational Learning, a project focused on making the Library’s collections more accessible to families, kids, and teens. This broad scope included outreach to children and teens on the Library of Congress’s National Book Festival topics; content for the Library’s Families’ blog, Minerva’s Kaleidoscope, efforts to engage audiences of all ages with the Library’s music and music education resources; and a reader’s theater activity that brought radio scripts from the Library’s collection to life in an interactive and accessible way. They hope that their contributions will provide the Library with long-term content that can be used to connect families with the Library’s vast collections and foster meaningful learning and engagement now and into the future.

View: Project Video – Finn Smith, Rachel Scott and Echo Rue, summer 2021 Junior Fellows, personal statements.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Mary Murdock, University of Maryland, College Park

Office of the Librarian, Center for Learning, Literacy and Engagement 
Literary Initiatives
Literary Programs Development

Mary Murdock’s 2021 Junior Fellows project focused on creating and organizing content for the 2021 National Book Festival (NBF)’s “Near You” component. The Book Festival’s virtual format expanded the reach and accessibility of Library of Congress programs in 2020, and the “Festival Near You” is an extension of this effort. The new components of the official NBF website include a landing page with an interactive map, individual pages for each state with information on local programming and Great Reads picks, and a page organizing all local programming into a sortable format.

By encouraging state affiliates and local partner organizations to present their own programming in connection to the National Book Festival and more prominently featuring the Great Reads picks from each Affiliate Center for the Book, the “Festival Near You” is an exciting expansion of efforts to make the nation’s premier celebration of books and reading accessible to people across the United States.

View: Project Video –– Mary Murdock, summer 2021 Junior Fellow, personal statement.
View: Project Infographic | Infographic transcript

Legacy Links

The Junior Fellows Program is now in its 30th Year. View sample links of this legacy program.

Articles

Videos

Alumni

The Junior Fellows summer intern program has been a signature initiative of the Library of Congress since 1991.The Junior Fellows Program is made possible by a gift from the late James Madison Council member Nancy Glanville Jewell through the Glanville Family Foundation and the Knowledge Navigators Trust Fund and by an investment from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.