The Library of Congress Talks Digital Initiatives

Recently, LJ Academic Newswire columnist Ellyssa Kroski interviewed Michelle Springer, a project manager of digital initiatives within the Library of Congress Office of Strategic Initiatives. They covered the library's recent forays into social media, including a blog, a Facebook Page, YouTube and iTunes channels, and a Twitter account, as well as its participation in Flickr Commons. For the full interview, see bit.ly/LCInitiatives.

Where are you with the Flickr Commons pilot?

We continue to add new images each week...and receive about 800,000 views a month for the 6700-plus images. In June, we began offering something a bit different—a set of cover pages from the New York Tribune illustrated Sunday supplements, starting with the year 1909. The pages are derived from the Chronicling America newspaper resource and complement the photos in our News from the 1910 set.

What has been the response to these social media initiatives? Have you experienced any significant ROI on one platform vs. another?

The reception for the library's collections and news about library events, acquisitions, and exhibits has been consistently...positive in all these communities. The library's Twitter account has over 13,000 followers; the Facebook page gained 5000 fans in under a month; more than 24,500 Flickr members have designated the library as a “contact.”

There is strong evidence [users are recirculating our content]. For example, a library video recounting the history of Rosie the Riveter that has been available for more than five years on loc.gov had received about 20,000 total views; that same video had received approximately 13,500 views over five months on YouTube, largely the result of embedding across the web.