Version 1.0; October 1, 2018
 

The Library of Congress’s mission is to engage, inspire, and inform the Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of 

knowledge and creativity. To accomplish that mission, the Library is adopting a 

digital-forward strategy that harnesses technology to bridge geographical divides, expand our reach, and enhance our services. This document describes 

how we will secure the Library’s position in an increasingly digital world as we 

realize our vision that all Americans are connected to the Library of Congress. 

The Digital Strategy complements the Library’s 2019-2023 strategic plan, Enriching the User Experience, which enumerates four high-level goals: expand 

access, enhance services, optimize resources, and measure results. The 

Digital Strategy describes what the Library plans to accomplish, in terms of digital transformation, over the next five years to achieve these goals. The transformation we describe below applies to all of the Library’s programs, including our 

collections, researcher services, the United States Copyright Office, the Congressional Research Service, and the National Library Service for the Blind and 

Physically Handicapped.

Digital technology enables us to sustain and expand services to all users, bridging gaps and strengthening connections. The Digital Strategy describes how we 

will use each interaction as an opportunity to move users along a path from 

awareness, to discovery, to use, and finally to a connection with the Library 

through three main goals: throwing open the treasure chest, connecting, and 

investing in our future. 

Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 2 

INTRODUCTION 

WE WILL THROW 

OPEN THE 

TREASURE CHEST 

WE WILL 

CONNECT 

WE WILL INVEST 

IN OUR FUTURE 
 Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 3 

The Library’s content, programs, and expertise are national treasures – we are 

dedicated to sharing them as broadly as possible. The growth of the Library’s 

digital content, which includes our collections, has increased exponentially every 

year. We will make that content available and accessible to more people, work 

carefully to respect the expectations of the Congress and the rights of creators, 

and support the use of our content in software-enabled research, art, exploration, 

and learning. 

Exponentially grow our collections 

The Library will continue to build a universal and enduring source of knowledge 

and creativity. We will expand our digital acquisitions program, as outlined in Collecting Digital Content at the Library of Congress; continue our aggressive digitization program, which prioritizes the Library’s unique treasures; and improve 

search and access services that facilitate discovery of materials in both physical 

and digital formats.

We will expedite the availability of newly acquired or created content to the web 

and on-site access systems. This will mean making improvements to the procedures and tools we use to move content from acquisition or creation to access, 

which will be critical as we continue to experience exponential growth in the size 

of our digital collection. We will also improve tools to make it easier for Library 

staff to enhance content after publication, such as adding additional description 

or information about the conservation of objects.

WE WILL THROW OPEN 

THE TREASURE CHEST 
 Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 4 

Maximize the use of content 

Promoting creativity and building cultural heritage collections entails protecting 

creators’ intellectual property rights. This responsibility is salient at the Library, as 

the home of the United States Copyright Office. We will explore creative solutions to reduce the barriers to material while respecting the rights of creators, the 

desires of our donors, and our other legal and ethical responsibilities.

We publish the rights status of some items and collections, which provides helpful context to those using these materials. We will continue our efforts to make 

this information machine-readable, associated with individual items, and interoperable with other efforts to make it easier for users to discover rights-free content. Rights assessment requires detailed work by experts; crowdsourcing and 

machine learning can help us scale. Our program to digitize historic copyright 

records will make research more convenient to users who want to connect with 

rights holders for usage permission.

We will expand our ability to provide secure on-site access to rights-restricted 

digital material, such as our electronic journal collection acquired through eDeposit and digital files in manuscript collections. Additionally, we will build systems 

that will allow users the maximum authorized access to content, based on their 

role (e.g., congressional user, staff, or researcher) and on or off-site location. 

When we implement user authentication, we will do so in a responsible manner, 

following the library profession’s long history of protecting user privacy and confidentiality.

We will increase the discoverability of rights-restricted content so users can better understand what is available on site. This could include offering off-site users 

additional information to aid in discovery for items not viewable on the open web. 

Support emerging styles of research 

 

We will continue to enable computational use of our content and metadata. We 

currently provide machine-readable access to metadata and items on loc.gov, 25 

million downloadable bibliographic records, and the text of 13 million digitized 

newspaper pages. Providing machine-readable access to our data and enabling 

computational analysis allows scholars, artists, and others to use the collection in 

creative ways, including performing content analysis and creating digital artwork. 

We will continue to invite scholars, artists, journalists, students, and people learning to code to use our resources.
 Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 5 

The Library offers an incredible wealth of content, programs, and services to 

Congress and the American people. We strive to connect with more users by 

making those services and content accessible for all.

To enable computational analysis, we will prioritize collection readiness by 

providing more bulk data downloads of content and metadata, improving the usability of the interfaces we publish for programmers, and building more capacity 

for automated metadata creation, including optical character recognition and 

speech to text. When the data sets we provide are updated or enhanced, we will 

make the version information clear to enable reproducibility of research. We will 

also explore offering tools for non-consumptive data analysis of our content, for 

example, by offering mechanisms to analyze average sentence lengths of different authors. 

WE WILL 

CONNECT 
 

Inspire a lifelong relationship with every visit 

In 2017 we welcomed 115 million visits to our websites. Some of these visitors 

came to Congress.gov for legislative information and others came to use our 

online collections. We will deepen our engagement with all online users including those who arrive at our website intending to see only an item or two. We will 

employ user-centered design to explore how our websites can invite all visitors 

to more deeply explore our collections, services, publications, and on-site experiences. 

Our ability to accomplish a deeper connection with users depends heavily on 

the strength of our user interfaces. We will emphasize the importance of user 

experience analysis and continue to make progress toward intuitive search and 

discovery. We will deliver optimized experiences for large and small screens, 

including mobile devices, across all of our websites. We prioritize the accessibility of our digital services to all people, inclusive of those with physical disabilities 

and in communities with low-speed internet access.

In 2017, we hosted more than 1.9 million visitors at the Library’s buildings. 

These visits present opportunities for making stronger connections through increased digital engagement. Visitors’ experiences at programs, exhibits, and 

tours will link them to online services and digital content that they can share with 

others and access from anywhere. 

 

Bring the Library to our users 

 

Many of the Library’s digital users come directly to our websites to discover content. To expose even more people to the Library’s content and services, we will 

bring digital content to users by making more of our material available in other 

websites and apps that they are already using. Structuring our information to be 

machine-readable will make the Library’s primary source material available to 

more people in more places and accessible to a broader diversity of users. We 

will work to broadcast the availability of our machine readable content and make 

strategic partnerships with those that can use and extend the reach of our content to additional platforms.

Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 6 
 

Among our most important treasures at the Library are the knowledge and wisdom of our staff. We will empower our staff with tools and pathways to make it 

easy for them to share stories, standards, expertise, and data with the broadest 

audience possible. The Library has established social media presences that enable conversation with users and blogs that help us share in-depth stories. We 

will expand upon these successes by streamlining traditional web publishing 

and exploring the use of new platforms and formats.

Whether they are congressional staff, academic researchers, teachers, or culturally curious individuals, our users will know that we are here to help them and 

answer their questions. Over the next five years we will explore emerging technologies to help improve the reach of our expert staff serving users in this capacity.

Welcome other voices 

We welcome the knowledge and expertise that others would like to share. 

Crowdsourcing programs have enriched the context and increased discoverability of Library content. We will expand the availability of crowdsourcing tools to 

encourage focused public participation in the collective development of cultural 

memory and to provide text and context that make our content more accessible 

for all. 

The Library is well known for a collection that broadly includes the daily experiences of people around the world. These include collections in the Congressionally designated Veterans History Project, the American Folklife Center, and 

our web archiving program. New technologies offer expansive potential to 

broaden and scale the range of methods by which all Americans can contribute 

their voices to the Library’s collections. Web publishing and social media have 

enabled more people to share their experiences, and, guided by our collection 

development policies, we will continue to ensure that our collection represents a 

diversity of voices.

Drive momentum in our communities 

We are inspired and guided by the success of our colleagues and peers in other 

organizations, including cultural heritage institutions and Federal agencies. A 

traditional strength of libraries is a willingness to work together: when we collaborate, we can achieve together what we cannot accomplish alone. We will continue to participate in professional organizations and cooperatives that expand 

our perspectives and enable us to share our experiences. Additionally, developing partners in industry can allow us to connect the Library with new areas of 

expertise and resources.

Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 7 
 

We will continue to lead and participate in communities developing open formats 

and standards. We will make our in-house-developed or commissioned software 

applications open source, and when choosing software, we will heavily weigh 

the beneficial community effects of using open-source.

WE WILL INVEST 

IN OUR FUTURE 

The Library is dedicated to preserving the wisdom and creativity of past generations, serving our current users, and looking ahead to future needs. We will engage in the active work of preserving our digital collections, safeguarding our 

content and metadata, and ensuring the usability of what we make available 

over time. As we protect the past, we also look to the future. In addition to the 

Library’s ongoing investments in IT modernization, we will encourage a culture 

of continuous learning and capacity for innovation. We will engage with new 

technologies and communities.

Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 8 
 Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 9 

Cultivate an innovation culture 

 

We will cultivate an innovation culture by empowering our staff, who have expertise in a wide range of subject areas, including the work of Congress, United 

States copyright law, American and foreign law, and our collections. We are 

deeply motivated to explore new avenues that connect our expertise with users. 

We will create an environment that enables staff to explore new avenues to 

achieve the Library’s goals by reducing barriers to innovation.

Organizations excel at what they practice, and the Library will make experimentation a core practice. We will ensure that staff have the infrastructure, tools, access to expertise, and institutional support they need to perform their work and 

try new approaches in an increasingly digital world. We will make the most of our 

experiments by gathering the evidence necessary to determine whether a bright 

idea can ultimately become a part of our everyday technology or practice.

We will offer the training, tools, infrastructure, opportunities, and organizational 

support needed to enable staff to adapt to a changing information landscape. 

We can expose staff to new ways of working, for example, by encouraging our 

staff to collaborate with outside experts in digital-forward organizations. We will 

seek other creative ways to help our staff broaden their perspectives like peer 

mentoring and training, collaborative workspaces, and encouraging short-term 

assignments in different departments.

Technology investments will amplify the expertise of our staff and increase our 

impact. We will find efficiencies that give our staff more time to focus on their intellectual work rather than procedural steps. For example, copyright registration 

or collections processing might be streamlined through the use of emerging 

technologies such as computer vision, natural language process, and machine 

learning. These kind of emerging technologies can provide the basis for nextgeneration tools to help provide greater discoverability, and reduce the time 

needed to perform research and analysis.
 Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 10 

Ensure enduring access to content 

Our plans for the future must entail preserving and protecting our collections and 

content. We will acquire, manage, and secure the Library’s digital content and 

metadata to support responsible and trustworthy long-term stewardship. Digital 

media are subject to degradation just like physical materials, and preserving the 

utility of older computer files requires trained technical expertise. We will ensure 

that digital items in our collection have a verifiable chain of custody to ensure authenticity as objects are moved between storage media, updated, or migrated 

between formats. We will continue to investigate and practice methods of emulation and migration to provide continued usability of files and programs as technology evolves.

Build toward the horizon

While we plan for our future, we are also paying close attention to innovations 

and trends that will present future challenges and opportunities. Newer tools, 

such as augmented and virtual reality, computer vision, natural language processing, and machine learning, are already transforming how we live and work. 

We will expand applied research to help the Library understand how to leverage 

emerging technologies to help connect our users with our resources and content. 

We will invest in pilots to enable the Library’s exploration of emerging technologies. We will monitor emerging trends in digital culture that will impact our operations, including new methods of expression in need of copyright protection and 

the shift of the creative and historic record increasingly to digital formats.

The goals and priorities presented in the Digital Strategy build upon past digital 

initiatives and incorporate the forward-looking momentum provided by the Library’s Strategic Plan. In the next five years, we will use this document as a tool 

to share our expertise, connect with more people, and empower our staff to leverage an increasingly digital future to engage, inspire, and inform the Congress 

and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and 

creativity.
 

ABOUT THE DIGITAL STRATEGY 

 

The Digital Strategy complements the 2019-2023 Strategic Plan, which outlines 

the vision, mission and near-term goals for the Library. Driven by this plan, the 

Digital Strategy describes what the Library should look like, in terms of its digital 

transformation, over the next five years, including initiatives that are already in 

process. Implementation will be governed by Service Unit directional plans, 

which may involve funding proposals.

Investments to infrastructure are critical to the Digital Strategy and will be addressed in the OCIO Directional Plan. Additionally, the Library’s Collecting Digital Content at the Library of Congress will determine our acquisition strategy for 

digital collections.

The FY2019-2023 Digital Strategic Plan of the Library of Congress is available 

online at: https://www.loc.gov/digital-strategy

Contact us at LC-Labs@loc.gov 

Library of Congress Digital Strategy FY2019-2023 11