Media Contacts: Brett Zongker, Library of Congress, bzongker@loc.gov

Wendy Burton, Eastern Oklahoma Library System, wburton@eols.org, 918-441-0910

New Grant-Funded Initiative Aims to Co-Create Cutting-Edge Digital Experiences with National Collections

The Library of Congress today announced LOCal, a new multiyear digital initiative, will expand the national library’s capacity to bring digital collections into local communities through partnerships with public libraries. The Library has chosen to partner with the Eastern Oklahoma Library System’s Muskogee Public Library as one of two public libraries chosen to co-create interactive digital experiences that connect local community members with relevant materials held in the national library’s collections.

LOCal will enable the Library of Congress to collaborate with public libraries and the communities they serve while exploring emerging technologies and approaches to create meaningful experiences with the national library’s vast digital collections.

The Library of Congress has also selected Cleveland Public Library. Planning is underway, and the digital installations are expected to launch in Oklahoma and Cleveland in 2026.

“Public libraries are often the first places people turn to conduct local research, get inspired or connect with their neighbors,” Library of Congress Digital Innovation Division Chief Laurie Allen said. “While the Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, our vast and varied collections speak to people from all across the country and help tell their unique stories. We’re honored for the opportunity to work alongside these two amazing library systems to connect our expert staff and unparalleled materials with their community expertise and imagination.”

Over the next two years, the Library of Congress will work with the Eastern Oklahoma Library System and Cleveland Public Library to co-create two cutting-edge digital experiences where communities in Eastern Oklahoma and Cleveland can engage with digital library materials in ways that bring the collections to life in their own backyards.

This initiative will follow the efforts of the Library of Congress’ Innovators in Residence, who have produced creative and transformative digital work for the American people from free-to-use Library collections. Past innovators worked closely with Library staff to create new hip-hop music with the Library’s free-to-use audio and video materials, re-imagine how to navigate digitized newspapers with machine learning, and digitally reconstruct historic places with photos, maps and virtual reality technologies. Current Innovator in Residence Vivian Li is developing local adventures for audiences around the country to learn about their hometowns through items from the Library of Congress’ digital collections.

The Library of Congress is home to extensive digital collections from across the United States, and Eastern Oklahoma and Cleveland are no exceptions. For example, users can find local Eastern Oklahoma material in a variety of formats, time periods, and collections across the Library including the Farm Security Administration Collection, Veterans History Project, Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Collection, Carol Highsmith Photography Archive, Chronicling America newspaper archive, and more. Similarly for Cleveland, users can find digital material in collections such as Works Progress Administration Posters, Stereograph Cards, Detroit Publishing Company photography archive, the Historic American Engineering Record, and the American Archive of Public Broadcasting.

The project is made possible by generous philanthropic grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and other generous funders.

About the Eastern Oklahoma Library System

The Eastern Oklahoma Library System is a multi-county organization serving 15 libraries in six counties in Eastern Oklahoma: Muskogee, Adair, Cherokee, Delaware, McIntosh and Sequoyah. The library system has demonstrated its innovative approach to services and programs through the early adoption of maker spaces, the Library of Things borrowing program, a Memory Lab for digitizing older media and online reading, printing and database resources. They have also developed innovative programming such as Touch-A-Truck, where community members can see, touch and interact with dozens of vehicles from fire trucks to cement trucks.

About the Cleveland Public Library

At over 150 years old, Cleveland Public Library is one of Cleveland, Ohio’s oldest institutions and today serves nearly 300,000 registered borrowers across 30 branch libraries. Cleveland Public Library has pioneered a variety of innovative services and programs, including a state-of-the-art maker space, a teen technology center and a teen innovation center. CPL Play, the library’s celebration of gaming culture, promotes gaming events and competitions for a broad audience.

About the Library of Congress

The Library’s Digital Innovation Division, LC Labs, supports the Library’s mission to engage, inspire and inform Congress and the American people with a universal and enduring source of knowledge and creativity. LC Labs is home to the Library of Congress Innovator in Residence Program; leads experiments with AI and other new technologies; and supports communities in exploring the Library’s data and digital collections. Learn more about the Library’s approach to digital strategy and visit labs.loc.gov to see this work in action.

The Library of Congress is the world’s largest library, offering access to the creative record of the United States — and extensive materials from around the world — both on-site and online. It is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office. Explore collections, reference services and other programs and plan a visit at loc.gov; access the official site for U.S. federal legislative information at congress.gov; and register creative works of authorship at copyright.gov.

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