Computers in Libraries 2014 - Day 2 - Keynote

My second day of Computers in Libraries 2014 officially began with a keynote presented by Mary Lee Kennedy, the Chief Library Officer at New York Public Library.  Ms. Kennedy titled her talk Hacking Strategies for Library Innovation and began with a quick list of four strategies that she then explained in depth in her presentation.  Those four strategies were:

1. Know what we are fundamentally about
2. Identify the target areas of opportunity
3. We need to make changes - head off in the direction even when we don't know what the outcome might be
4. We need to have fun

On the topic of "knowing what we are fundamentally about" Kennedy described the role that the New York Public Library plays.  On a local level it provides a variety of services to the city of New York.  It is free for all to use and books, archives, and documents are in its collections.  

But because the New York Public Library has an Internet presence, its potential for a community it can serve expands to the 2.5 billion people who use the Internet.  In addition to its physical materials it is now a place that can offer digital media and data offering APIs for that community to use to access that information.

As for opportunity, the New York Public Library has historically focused on access to information.  Going forward there is an opportunity to move from a passive role of just providing access, to an active role of engaging with users. 

Kennedy laid out some strategies for changes that can be made to capitalize on this opportunity.

Make knowledge accessible 

NYPL has started the following initiatives to make knowledge more accessible:

• NYPL Map Warper - takes sheet maps and puts them into Google Earth to give context, like showing what families lived where in Manhattan 100 years ago.  NYPL encouraged users to make corrections to the Google Earth overlays in a game-like fashion, and as a result what would have taken staff months was accomplished very quickly.

• Children's' books - Has an intuitive mechanism for quickly narrowing down titles of interest from a list of recommended children's' books.

• NYPL Archives & Manuscripts - This system allows traditional textual links that exist between different archives and manuscripts to be expressed in a graphical way.

Turn the Library Inside Out (or Take the Library Out)
Rather than requiring people to come to the library for services, we need to export library services out so that the public can benefit from them in many different contexts.  Here are some examples of how NYPL is attempting to do that:

• Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon - Many people use Wikipedia as a starting point and librarians have the expertise and the resources to improve it; it is an area where we can help

• Zooniverse - NYPL has partnered with this citizen-science site to use crowd-sourcing to turn text into structured data

• Hackathons - If we can connect people who know common kinds of things wonderful things can happen.  We need to get inside of the life of the people in our communities.

• Bit by Bit - the NYPL has helped people to collaborate in digital storytelling for this project.

Spark Connections
Libraries are all about connecting people, but we are a part of a network ourselves.  Focus on what we do best and focus on what others will do better with us.

• ReadersFirst  - 292 library systems subscribe to the principle that it should be easy for people to read an ebook.  They now have a guide to library ebook vendors.  Working on an ebook api.

• Broadband lending - literally lending out Internet connections via wireless connection boxes.

• MyLibraryNYC - Teachers select titles and title sets.  NYPL delivers the books to schools and they pick them up when the teachers are done.

In all of these kinds of endeavors Kennedy encourages us to have fun.