Featured Case Study
Open Library Communications Program
Nick Norman
Communications Lead Fellow & Emeritus | Internet Archive
Overview
When growth demanded more than volunteers could sustain
Open Library serves more than 15 million booklovers worldwide. With the continuous release of new features and products, it took a higher volume of content to help patrons better understand and access those services.
"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, a project that preserves more than 150 petabytes of data.
Building a communications program inside that community meant growing something new without disrupting the workflows volunteers had already built. The program had to align with the Internet Archive's broader direction, not compete with it.
Infrastructure Lens
The Starting Point
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. Coordinating that volume was more than the small group of volunteers who had been handling it could keep up with. 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. The Turing Way later featured the program in its own newsletter.
02
Launched a pilot podcast not as a product but to test how volunteers could collaborate on a complex open project. The lessons from that process directly informed our collaborative content writing processes.
03
Established cross-departmental channels so staff, stakeholders, and project leads across Engineering, Design, and Librarianship could contribute to communications work where needed.
04
Once the program was stable, it was handed off to permanent communications staff. It has remained a part of Open Library ever since.
Ongoing Impact
The program kept moving after the handoff
One example of what the program made possible was bringing together an international collaboration of volunteer librarians building the Nancy Drew collection. It generated 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
Runs the Open Library Program
Elizabeth M.
Communications Lead
Brewster Kahle, Lisa S., Chris Freeland, Drini Cami, Jim Champ, Mark H., Brenton Cheng
