Shift #12 - Kluge Center & Federal Research Division Webinar
Tuesday, June 4, 2024 | 12-1 pm CST/1-2 pm EST (1 hr)
Details
Michelle Hurt, student/intern
Jennifer Gonzalez, practicum supervisor
This is a screenshot of a webinar hosted by the Kluge Center and the Federal Research Division. This webinar is part of the Internships and Fellowships Program of the Library of Congress.
I really appreciate that while my internship is with the Law Library, we have the opportunity to learn about the Library of Congress and its different departments. Today, during my lunch break at work, I participated in a live webinar run by the Internships and Fellowships Program of the Library of Congress. There many interns from various parts of the Library's summer programs and it was neat to see us all "gathered" together albeit virtually. I have never heard of the Kluge Center or the Federal Research Division so I thought it was a good opportunity to expand my knowledge. The Kluge Center is actually a residential scholar center where they do research in humanities and social sciences. There are up to 60 residents, I believe, who conduct their research in this program. The Kluge Center began in 2000 for an interconnection between thought and action (a way to bridge scholarship and policy-making). On top of research, the Kluge Center also does event programming like the ceremony for the Kluge Prize for Achievement in the Humanities, public lectures, Congressional Crossroads, Dinner & Democracy, Congressional breakfasts and signature events like the Kissinger Lecture and the SOTU Reception. The Kluge Center has different chair programs like the Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations and the Maguire Chair in Ethics and American History. Lastly, the Kluge Center oversees the Scholars Council, which is one of the boards in the Library of Congress; the council advice the Library and Kluge Center on issues relating to scholarship in the library.
This is a screenshot of the second part of the webinar, hosted by the Federal Research Division. The FRD is run like a business, selling services to different parts of the federal government.
The second part of the webinar was about the Federal Research Division. They are different from the Congressional Research Services, in that they provide services to everyone (federal clients) except for Congress. They are considered a cost-recovery unit where they charge a fee for their services, which pays for staff salaries. The FRD has been around for more than 70 years and initially began as a way to serve the Air Force and Department of Defense. They have since expanded and they do not conduct classified research; everything is open-source research. Several FRD staff spoke about their work and how project management is key to working with clients. Project managers have a lot of client-facing responsibilities on top of research, with section heads helping form the scope of work with the client. They gave an example of research they did for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about barriers into the naturalization process. USCIS was very impressed with their work that the research was published on their website for the public to read. This isn't always the case; clients have intellectual property ownership over the product unless they provide permission for research documents to be publicly available.
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