Introduce yourself and meet the crowd.loc.gov community.

Hello everyone! I'm Victoria, one of the Community Managers for our crowdsourcing effort at the Library of Congress. I worked on a few online crowdsourcing projects before I came to the Library, and I have a background in Renaissance and Medieval English literature. I'm also passionate about American literature and history--and excited to learn more! It's a privilege to work at the Library with such knowledgeable and talented staff who devote their lives to making the Library's treasures accessible to all. Thank you for taking part in crowd.loc.gov and helping with this important work. I look forward to the day when all of our manuscript and printed material is fully searchable on the Library's catalog.

Hi Crowd!  I’m Lauren Algee, another of the Community Managers for crowd.loc.gov. I’m excited to help lifelong learners and the historically curious out there connect with the Library of Congress and its vast and fascinating collections.

My background is as an archivist and before coming to the Library of Congress I worked at the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History in Austin, Texas, the National Gallery of Art, and the DC Public Library (DCPL).  At DCPL I managed the library’s digital local history collections. I also co-founded the DC Public Library's Memory Lab, a public space for digitization and learning how to care for your personal digital archives. I now serve on the board of the Memory Lab Network and encourage you to see if there’s a Memory Lab in your area!

Hi everyone! I'm Meghan and I'm a Community Manager, too. I'm really looking forward to collaborating, sharing interesting things we find in our collections, and hearing more about what sparks your interest in history. The Library of Congress has such depth of resources and we're thrilled people are keen to help make them more searchable and useful to many people.

Before I joined the Library of Congress, I had the chance to learn from and partner with volunteers at the Smithsonian Transcription Center. I hope you'll explore those projects, as well. My background is as a historian and cultural anthropologist - across my research experiences, I've tried to understand the ways people share information, work together, work through conflict, and use stories and digital spaces to understand and relate to each other.

Can't wait to hear more about what you think of and find in our first challenge: Letters to Lincolnhttps://crowd.loc.gov/campaigns/letters-to-lincoln/!

Hi folks! I'm Elaine and the fourth Community Manager. Along with my colleagues, I am beyond excited to collaborate and learn from you all. Please let us know what you find interesting, what sparks your curiosity or what features you'd like to see in the application.

Prior to joining the Library of Congress, I was working at 18F, an office within the General Services Administration. 18F collaborates with other agencies to improve how government serves the public through technology.

CROWD looks amazing! I can't wait to give it a try.

Hi all. I'm a processing archivist here at NARA, and community manager for the "Researchers Help" space here on History Hub. Having spent the first half of my career working with NARA's photo collections, I am naturally drawn to LC's fabulous collections too. Recently I spent a great deal of time annoying the Prints and Photographs staff with caption submissions for some of the distressingly large number of "no caption" images in the National Photo Co. and Harris & Ewing collections. The most rewarding part was identifying two of NARA's early division chiefs:

                                               LC-H2-B-8017 and 8018 (P&P)

                                                      Roscoe Hill, Division of Classification, ca. 1935

                                             LC-H2-B-8253 (P&P)

                                                    Thomas M. Owen, Division of Accessions, ca. 1935

     With over 30,000 images labeled "no caption" in the Harris & Ewing collection (and many more with such

     informative captions as "Man seated at desk"), this might make an excellent CROWD project for the future!

     Best wishes to everyone involved with this exciting new venture.

Thanks for introducing yourself Alan, and for outlining your request/hope for additional functionality and collection types in Crowd. We've had a lot of in-house enthusiasm for this kind of functionality as we built crowd.loc.gov over the last year. It's definitely something we're keen to explore.

Hi everyone.  I'm ShawnMarie from PA.  I have a little bit of a paper problem - in love with all of it.  :-)  My favorite things are women's magazines from the war years, recipes and maps.  I have a degree in Geography but my day job is in IT Data management.  I've always wanted to be a librarian and to help people find things they want to know more about so hoping I can help out this way.

ShawnMarie

Welcome Shawn! We're so glad that you can fulfill some of your desire to help people navigate cultural heritage by taking part in this project. Thanks for donating your time and for introducing yourself. Happy transcribing, tagging and reviewing!

-Victoria, a fellow lover of paper and its digital manifestations

Hi everyone! My name is Sheena and I'm from Ohio. I am the director of the Hardin County Historical Museums, Inc. in Kenton Ohio. My favorite things are old pictures and letters. I have a Master of Arts degree in History. I'm really looking forward to being able to contribute!