The Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution and serves as the research arm of Congress. It is also the largest library in the world, with over 158 million books, recordings, photographs, maps, films and video, sheet music, sound recordings, and manuscripts in its collections. They have been seeking a contractor to provide at least two experimental prototypes or proofs of concept for at least two human in-the-loop workflows using Library of Congress collections that are presented and tested with users. The successful contractor is Audio Visual Presentation Solutions Inc. of Brooklyn, and the total contract value is $145,000.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS: Humans in the Loop: Accelerating access and discovery for digital collections by combining digitally enabled human participation and machine learning. Notice ID: 030ADV20Q0284. Contract Opportunity Type: Award
The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. These materials are made available through various library interfaces for searching and browsing so that patrons may view (or listen to) items from the collection. Over the past few years, the Digital Innovation Labs Section (Labs) of the Digital Strategy Division has undertaken a range of programs aimed at maximizing the use of digital collections and supporting emerging research methods.
This work encompasses machine learning and crowdsourcing prototypes, proof-of-concept experiments, and reports with accompanying recommendations to explore the opportunities and challenges of operationalizing emerging technologies at scale. Through various experiments, reports and events, Labs has been committed to exploring methods and approaches that responsibly integrate people and machines. User feedback, transparent and open knowledge sharing, iteration, and combining human expertise with automated methods is a central part of Labs experimental process. Now, the Library of Congress seeks to build on these initial experiments to further examine models that expand access to digital collections by combining digitally-enabled human participation with computational methods, otherwise known as human-in-the-loop approaches.
The Library was seeking a contractor to provide at least two experimental prototypes or proofs of concept for at least two human in-the-loop workflows using Library of Congress collections that are presented and tested with users. The goals in creating these prototypes are to model, test, and evaluate different ethical approaches to applying crowdsourcing and machine learning methods to Library digital collections that enhance collection usability, utility, discoverability, and user engagement.
To see the original RFP, please go to this link.
To see the award notice, please go to this link.
Successful contractor:
Audio Visual Preservation Solutions, Inc.
253 36th Street, Suite C309, #22
Brooklyn, New York 11232
USA
Contact:
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave SE LA 325
Washington , DC 20540
USA
For the attention of: Jennifer Zwahlen
jzwa@loc.gov
+1 2027 070 925
