We are delighted to host Kate Zwaard, Director of Digital Strategies for the Library of Congress, for an afternoon Meet and Greet on Wednesday, October 2nd. Kate and her colleagues will be giving a talk on current research development and digital transformation at the Library of Congress and will address some of the digital content-related challenges their agency is currently facing.  

Kate's team is enacting an ambitious digital strategy for the Library of Congress (LC) and hoping to pursue research partnerships in five general themes: 1) throwing open their treasure chest by exponentially growing their digital content, maximizing use by making sure their materials are discoverable and accessible, while maintaining privacy; 2) supporting emerging styles of computational research, and providing machine-readable access and automated meta-data; 3) inspiring lifelong relationships with every online visit and ensuring accessibility of materials by bringing the library to their users of all types and abilities; 4) providing machine-readable LC content on third-party apps and websites; and (5) ensuring digital items in LC collection have a verifiable chain of custody to ensure authenticity as objects are moved between storage media, updated, or migrated between formats.

Kate's team will provide an interactive presentation of their ongoing transformation and is also hoping to have a discussion with faculty and staff from all areas in the iSchool. At this point, we believe the format will be a series of short presentations from Kate and her team, weaved with Q&A from iSchool attendees, with the last hour dedicated to discussion on the next steps for exploring this partnership. More details will be provided as we get closer to the event.

This will be an excellent opportunity to expand our professional networks and begin fostering a partnership with the Library of Congress as we brainstorm how we can work together to tackle some of the toughest digital content-related challenges at the largest library in the world.


Presentations and Q&A: 12PM – 2PM
Next steps discussion: 2 – 3 PM