Pilot Program with Lokadot

The Library Company has been chosen as one of five Philadelphia non-profits to join with newly-formed software development company Lokadot to launch a pilot program for its new application. Lokadot (a mash-up of “location” and “anecdote”) crowd-sources audio files to create a walking tour of the city. With the Lokadot application on a mobile phone, a user can walk the streets of Philadelphia and hear recorded presentations about historic and noteworthy sites which play automatically as he or she physically approaches their locations.

Founded in 2011 by Philadelphia entrepreneur Cliff Stevens, Lokadot offers ways for the Library Company to better serve the public both inside and outside our building. By combining Lokadot’s software with simple QR codes, the Library Company will soon be able to implement audio tours of our galleries. Easily accessible prerecorded presentations by exhibition curators will allow casual walk-in visitors and other exhibition attendees the advantages of a personal tour by the people who know the material best. At the same time, only a tiny fraction of the visitors to Philadelphia’s historic sites would normally have the opportunity to learn more about the related documents and ephemera in the Library Company collections. Our partnership with Lokadat will enable us to make brief engaging clips discussing historic moments and events available to visitors anywhere in the city.

The Library Company’s first contributions—available this fall—will be based on tours of important sites in the history of Abolitionism conducted for participants in a summer seminar for teachers in 2012. Library Company Director John Van Horne summed up the impact of this collaboration, saying “we are thrilled with the prospect of sharing the information in our collections in this way.”

Read Lokadot’s most recent press release.