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Vivian Lee showcases Anywhere Adventures, a Library of Congress project mapping local history
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Summary
Vivian Lee, 2025 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress, described Anywhere Adventures, a mobile site that maps Library of Congress digital-collection items to physical places and lets users build travel logs with up to five photos; the project launches with stories for Seattle, Southeast Wyoming and Chicago.
Vivian Lee, an artist and the 2025 Innovator in Residence at the Library of Congress, presented Anywhere Adventures, a mobile website that connects everyday places to items in the Library of Congress’s digital collections.
Lee said the project "brings local history stories to life by mapping out locations throughout the United States told through the lens of the Library of Congress." She described a demo that surfaces digitized items — for example, a Susan B. Anthony diary entry — alongside the physical location it documents.
The site is built around a map interface where users select a location and view story “bubbles” linked to Library of Congress items. Lee said the initial rollout includes three starting areas: Seattle, Southeast Wyoming and Chicago. Using Seattle as an example, she traced the history of the Occidental Hotel at 2nd, Yesler and James, noting that the hotel was damaged in the 1949 Olympia earthquake and later replaced by the Sinking Ship parking garage in Pioneer Square.
Users can create a travel log while visiting sites, Lee said. "Anywhere Adventures is a mobile website that lets you create a travel log while exploring corresponding digital collections at the Library of Congress," she said. The travel-log workflow lets users take up to five pictures with an in-site camera, arrange images and add text or saved library items to annotate their visits.
Lee framed the project as a way to turn digitized archive items into place-based narratives that encourage exploration: "My project hopes to bring stories to objects or places that you might walk past every day...and show you that there's stories in the places all around us." She emphasized both in-person exploration and the value of surfacing primary-source materials for local audiences and visitors.
The presentation described core features and examples but did not specify a public launch date, funding sources, or plans for expanding the set of starting locations beyond the three named areas. Lee said users can visit the site to choose a location, view stories and build travel logs, and she closed by restating the project’s aim of making library collections more accessible through place-based storytelling.
