FEATURED CASE STUDY

Open Library | Communications Program Architecture

Role: Communications Lead Fellow & Emeritus | 20M+ Readers, Global Open-Source Community 

Overview

Open Library serves more than 20 million booklovers worldwide. With the continuous release of new features and products, the demand for content to announce these updates and help patrons navigate the library increased.

While a distributed network of volunteers had successfully shared the load of producing content through organic participation, a small number of contributors could no longer produce content at the volume and frequency required to keep pace. This created the need for a dedicated communications program.

The Challenge

Open Library maintains its own public presence while being stewarded by the Internet Archive, one of the world’s largest digital libraries and web archives. The communications program had to strengthen Open Library’s voice without competing with the Internet Archive and operate across engineering, design, librarianship, data imports, and a global volunteer community.

Because Open Library is open source, the solution could not be centralized or top down. The program needed to support open contribution while maintaining clarity and trust at scale. The communications program also had to fit within an existing global organization, aligning with established teams and systems while still supporting open contribution and maintaining clarity and trust at scale.

Key Actions:

• Cross-Department Integration: Explored and clarified communication pathways across engineering, design, librarianship, data imports, and a global volunteer base, establishing practical ways for multiple departments to contribute to shared communications projects.

• Infrastructure Design: Created a "shared homebase" and standardized collaboration practices, allowing multiple teams to work in parallel without losing voice or quality.

• Strategy & Mobilization: Led the early-stage planning and stakeholder engagement required to move the vision from a concept into a functioning department.

• Managed Succession: Focused on long-term stability by guiding the program through a formal handoff to a permanent lead, ensuring the structure survived beyond my tenure

Ongoing Impact of the Communications Program

As the program stabilized, the focus shifted from building internal structure to strengthening outward-facing communications. As the program matured, leadership was handed off to Elizabeth May, a communications professional with deep experience in audience research, content distribution strategy, and public-facing communications.

Under the leadership of Elizabeth May, one example of the communications program in execution came in early 2026, when the team published a blog post highlighting an international collaboration of volunteer librarians building the Nancy Drew collection. The story generated strong engagement across social channels and was later featured as the main topic in NPR’s Books Newsletter. 

– Annual Communications Update: From Infrastructure to Execution (October 2024)
– Open Library Blog Post on the Nancy Drew collection (2026)
– Internet Archive social post (118K+ views)

Suggested Reading: Before You Hire Someone to Do Communications (Understanding the Difference Between Infrastructure and Execution).