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Opportunities

Innovator in Residence Program

Jer Thorp's "Library of Colors"

The application period for the 2025 Innovator in Residence External is now closed. We are pleased to share we have selected Seattle-based artist and developer Vivian Li and her "Anywhere Adventures" project.

Next application period

The next Broad Agency Announcement is expected to be published in January 2026, with the Residency beginning in September 2026. Sign up for the LC Labs Letter for future announcements, or check back on this page.

Informational Webinars

We offered two informational webinars in January about the application process and residency. Here is the slide deck used in both webinars and full transcripts for each session are posted below. Questions asked during the webinars and our answers are available in the questions section.

Getting Started

The Broad Agency Announcement on SAM.gov External includes 6 documents to help you in your application process:

  • "01 - 030ADV24R0020 - IIR-BAA.pdf" is the annoucement, with all info related to the residency and the steps to apply.
  • "02 - 030ADV24R0020 - BAA-FAQ.pdf" is a list of questions we have received from past rounds and answers.
  • "03 - 030ADV24R0020 - Attachment J-1 - Budget Plan Worksheet.xlsx" is a spreadsheet you must complete IF you are invited to submit a full proposal. You do not need it for the concept papers due on March 5th, but it might be a helpful resource as you think about pricing.
  • "04 - 030ADV24R0020 - Brian Foo Proposal and Budget EXAMPLE.pdf" is an example of a selected full proposal for the 2020 Innovator in Residence program by alumn Brian Foo.
  • "05 - 030ADV24R0020 - Brian Foo Concept Paper EXAMPLE.pdf" is an example of a selected concept paper for the 2020 Innovator in Residence program by alumn Brian Foo.
  • "06 - 030ADV24R0020 - Finding-LC-Digital-Collections.pdf" is a helpful resource that highlights some of the Library's digital collections and tips on how to browse others to get ideas for your concept.

Questions?

The question period for this round has closed. All questions received have been answered. For questions from the previous round, refer to the 030ADV24R0020 FAQ.

About the Residency

The Library of Congress has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to fund an individual to do research with Library of Congress collections, produce a creative and transformative digital work for the American people, and serve as an ambassador for the Library. The residency is anticipated to be mostly remote, with some in-person research and event requirements, beginning in September 2024. The residency will be no less than 12 months and no more than 24 months. Applicants will propose their own schedule for the residency as part of the application process. The second year of the residency is optional, pending Library approval and available funding.

Proposed budgets should not exceed $90,000 for the first year and $90,000 for the optional second year. The Labs team seeks proposals for research and work that connects Library collections to new audiences by promoting insight and inspiration, discovery of Library items, and/or creative remixing and reuse. The selected resident will have access to both publicly available and on-site only Library collections and will be given program and research support. The work(s) will be displayed on the Library’s websites and/or in public spaces at the discretion of the Library.

Current Innovator in Residence

2022-2023 Innovator Jeffrey Yoo Warren is using our collections to digitally reconstruct historic Chinatowns with 3D and virtual reality technologies. As part of Seeing Lost Enclaves: Relational Reconstructions of Erased Historic Neighborhoods of Color ,Yoo Warren published a toolkit External to share his methodology, empowering others to connect with their own ancestral enclaves through this creative process.

Past Innovators

  • 2021 Courtney McClellan - designed and curated Speculative Annotation, a dynamic website presenting items from the Library’s collections for students and teachers to have conversations with history through annotation.
  • 2020 Brian Foo - created the application Citizen Dj to enable the public to discover and create from LC free to use sound collections. Brian's concept paper is available at [baa link] for applicants to see.
  • 2020 Benjamin Charles Germain Lee - created a way for users to explore visual content from historic newspapers in the Chronicling America collection using machine learning.
  • 2018 Jer Thorp - applied the idea of serendipity to the scale of LC collections through the podcast "Artist in the Archive" and a suite of applications
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