030ADV20Q0285 - Experimental Access to Digital Collections and Data: Analyzing and Demonstrating Affordances at Scale

The Library of Congress (Library) Strategic Plan provides a vision that all Americans are connected to the Library. The Strategic Plan's accompanying Digital Strategy outlines how the Library will utilize technology to achieve this vision. As outlined in that strategy, the Library seeks to maximize the value of its collections and to understand the technical capabilities and tools that are required to support the discovery and use of digital collections material. The Library has hundreds of heterogeneous digital collections containing hundreds of millions of items which are made available on loc.gov for research and public use. As a result, there are various challenges of access and comprehension related to the scale of the Library of Congress collections and diversity of its content. Now the Labs seeks an analysis of the affordances and barriers for users of experimental digital collections interfaces like those produced by Labs and other similar groups. The Labs group is seeking a contractor to analyze the experiments, data, reports and outputs from their experiments published thus far and recommend and demonstrate possible next steps. The analysis, recommendations and demonstrations must clarify how user needs are met or unmet in the experimental interfaces it, and similar organizations, has produced--particularly for users who: are not currently connected to the Library; who are employing emerging styles of digitally-enabled research, visualization or analysis; and who might develop applications, share, learn, teach, connect or otherwise communicate with Library materials. The Library is also seeking recommendations based on user-centered research that identify potential methods and approaches to enhancing Library digital collections and access systems to satisfy unmet user needs. Over the past few years, the Library of Congress Labs Division (Labs) of the Digital Strategy Directorate has undertaken a range of programs aimed at maximizing the use of digital collections and data, especially for supporting emerging research methods and creative uses of collections. The Labs team is actively experimenting with various technological approaches such as creating machine learning derived data sets and reimaging discovery interfaces that connect a variety of users with the digital collections. This work encompasses prototypes, proof-of-concept designs, and reports with accompanying recommendations to explore the opportunities and challenges of operationalizing any of these technologies or approaches at scale. The experiments are grounded in being transparent, combining human expertise with automated methods, iterating in response to new evidence, and centering the user experience throughout. The Labs experimentation method is also rooted in a commitment to ethical and professional standards of accessibility and inclusivity. Amendment 0001 adds clause LC52.227-1, Assignment of Copyright by the Contractor to the Library and revises Section C.4.3, Key Personnel. The proposal response date has been extended until August 7, 2020 at 12:00:00 Noon EST. Amendment 0002 clarifies that the correct solicitation number is 030ADV20Q0285 as opposed to the number posted in this opportunity, which is 030ADV20Q285. Amendment 0002 revises clause LC52.232-2, Schedule of Payments, to reflect the updated payment schedule. Amendment 0003 provides Attachment J-1 - Responses to Offeror Questions. The proposal response date has been extended until August 10, 2020 at 12:00:00 Noon EST.