>> Selena Qian: Hi,
I'm Selena Qian.
I'm a rising senior
at Duke University,
studying visual media
studies and computer science.
This summer I am working as a
junior fellow at the Library
of Congress in the Digital
Strategy Division of the Office
of the Chief Information
Officer.
My project is part of a group
of fellows who are all working
on new experimental ways
to share digital
library collections.
I'm working specifically with
the Sanborn maps collection
and the newspaper
navigator data set.
The Sanborn maps
are a collection
of fire insurance maps,
the earliest map
from Boston in 1867.
These maps provide rick building
by building detail about cities
in the U.S., the
view from Canada,
Cuba, and Mexico as well.
With this information on
construction and materials,
researchers can discover
more about the history
of a particular place
and look for patterns.
The collection contains around
50,000 volumes, with over 30,000
of them currently
available online.
The Sanborn company continues
to make these maps,
now as EDR Sanborn.
The digitization of these maps
started about 20 years ago
when two library employees
manually entered records
from the Red Book, an index of
maps from the 1970s and 80s.
Due to copyright protections,
many of the maps can only be
shared outside of the library
and more become available
every year.
This accessibility provides a
really interesting opportunity
to engage wider audiences
and encourage exploration
of the maps.
The newspaper navigator dataset
draws from Chronicling America,
a collection of digitized
historic newspapers
that contains over
16 million pages.
A data set was created by using
machine learning to separate
out the visual content of
the pages; photos, headlines,
illustrations, cartoons,
maps and ads.
My project takes these two
rick sources of information
and ties them together
through an interactive
map visualization.
It's not quite complete at
the filming of this video.
For instance, you can see
that the newspaper navigator
data has not yet been added,
but the idea is that
visitors will be able to click
on different areas of
the map, trigger zoom in,
and see the results
update as they go.
I wanted to create something
that would draw people in
and encourage them to
explore the information
in an intuitive way.
I also wanted to add
some element of discover
and serendipity by tying
in the historic context
of the newspaper
headlines and images.
Through this creation process
I've been learning a lot,
both about the technology
used to create these kinds
of interactive platforms
and about the history
of the collections and how
the library does its work.
It's definitely been a challenge
to work from home and I'm glad
that the Fellows Program has
been able to adapt to that.
While my project has changed,
I still have the chance to work
with some amazing people
and create something
that will make information more
accessible to a wider audience.
I hope that the work that I
do this summer will contribute
to the library's
digital strategy goals
and inspire future projects.