Abbey Potter (Library of Congress) authored a post summarizing Michelle Gallinger’s (Gallinger Consulting) and Daniel Chudnov’s (Chudnov Consulting) report, “Library of Congress Lab” ,  which discusses “how libraries and other research centers have developed services that use computational analysis, design, and engagement to enable new kinds of discovery and outreach.”
Potter interviews the authors to gain additional insight in the report’s findings and process.
Why do you think this is a good time for the Library of Congress to consider establishing a Lab?
Michelle: It’s a great time to be engaged in addressing the needs of scholars to work with digital collections. As I mentioned before, there really is a demand from users for support in performing digital scholarship. The Library of Congress receives regular requests for this support and it’s my opinion the number of those requests will continue to grow. Concepts of “big data” and data analytics have permeated society. Everyone knows about it, everyone wants to be working with digital scholarship techniques and tools. A Lab is an opportunity for the Library of Congress to start addressing these requests for support with routine workflows, regular access permissions, consistent legal counsel and predictable guidelines. This support not only helps further the transformative influence of digital scholarship, it also makes the Library of Congress more efficient and able to respond and serve the needs of its 21st century scholars.
dh+lib Review
This post was produced through a cooperation between Emily Brock, Jennie Burroughs, Heather Hill,Pam Lach, Stephen Lingrell, Douglas Luman, and Amanda Tickner(Editors-at-large for the week), Caro Pinto (Editor for the week), Sarah Potvin (Site Editor), Caitlin Christian-Lamb, Roxanne Shirazi, and Patrick Williams (dh+lib Review Editors).