Featured Case Study
Open Library Communications Program
Nick Norman
Communications Lead Fellow & Emeritus | Internet Archive
Overview
When organic participation could no longer keep pace
Open Library serves more than 15 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.
"The greatest minds may develop the world's greatest ideas and still fail to reach the minds of others. A communications program changes that."
The Challenge
Building inside a living ecosystem
Open Library is the book lending interface of the Internet Archive, the biggest digital library project of all time, containing more than 150 petabytes of data.
Building a communications program inside that ecosystem meant working within an organization of extraordinary scale, mission, and institutional complexity while scaling something new without pulling against what already existed. The program had to grow in a way that would ultimately align with and intersect the broader roadmap of the Internet Archive, not compete with it.
Infrastructure Lens
The Starting Point
Open Library had long relied on a small group of volunteers producing communications content through organic participation. However, a period of rapid growth, compounded by a surge in demand during COVID and a continuous release of new features and services, created a need for such a high volume of content that the existing model could no longer keep pace. Patrons needed to understand what was available, how to find it, and how to use it. That is what made the case for a dedicated communications program.
The Approach
The work was not simply to produce more content. It was to build the pathways, workflows, relationships, and handoff structure that allowed communications to become a durable part of the ecosystem. That meant designing around the culture of an open-source community, testing how volunteers could collaborate on complex communications work, creating channels across departments, and preparing the program to be inherited by others.
Key Actions
Building infrastructure that fit the culture
01
Built volunteer pathways that accommodated different levels of interest and availability, drawing on knowledge resources from communities like the Turing Way and bringing in volunteer UX designers to test workflows and surface friction before scaling.
02
Launched a pilot podcast not as a product but as an incubation model, using it to test how volunteers could collaborate on a complex open project. The lessons from that process directly informed how the collaborative blog program was built. Cross-departmental channels were also established so that staff, stakeholders, and project leads across Engineering, Design, and Librarianship could contribute to communications work where needed.
03
Once the foundation was stable and workflows were tested, the focus shifted from building to execution. Communications professionals with the skills to run what had been built were brought in and walked through the decisions, the reasoning, and the infrastructure they would inherit. The program was handed off and has since become a permanent part of the organization.
Ongoing Impact
The program kept moving after the handoff
One example of what the program made possible was a story about an international collaboration of volunteer librarians building the Nancy Drew collection. It generated strong engagement across multiple social platforms, was picked up by NPR's Books Newsletter, and reached over 118,000 views on the Internet Archive's social channels alone.
That kind of reach does not happen without the infrastructure behind it. Upon his transition from the program, Nick Norman was awarded the Emeritus distinction in recognition of his contributions.
Special Thanks
Deepest appreciation to the many staff members and community leads across the Internet Archive and Open Library, and the volunteers who provided their support to the communications program.
Mek Karpeles, Lisa S., Chris Freeland, Drini Cami, Jim Champ, Mark H., Brenton Cheng
