FEATURED CASE STUDY

Open Library | Communications Program Architecture

Role: Communications Lead Fellow & Emeritus | 15M+ Readers, Global Open-Source Community 

Overview

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.

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 serves more than 20 million readers worldwide. As the program grew globally and continuously released new features and services, the demand for content grew beyond what a distributed volunteer network could sustain.

The organic model had worked well and was responsible for early community growth, but the program hit a scale where dedicated communications infrastructure was needed, one that could operate across engineering, design, librarianship, and a global volunteer community without centralizing or going top down.

Key Actions:

• Given space to explore the ecosystem, the communications team identified that organic community writing, while well suited to Open Library's distributed culture, could no longer keep pace with pandemic-era growth and a rapid rollout of new patron services, leading to the creation of a communications program designed around that nuance. 

• Built the program from scratch, establishing Slack-based team infrastructure, volunteer onboarding pathways, incubational testing spaces, and cross-departmental communication channels across Engineering, Design, Librarianship, and Data Systems, all while preserving the collaborative open-source ethos that made Open Library work.

• Executed a deliberate multi-month succession, collaborating directly with incoming leadership to transfer institutional knowledge, strategic context, and the reasoning behind every key decision, leaving a foundation designed to sustain and grow without its original architect.

Ongoing Impact of the Communications Program

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

One early example of the program in execution came in 2026, when the team published a story about an international collaboration of volunteer librarians building the Nancy Drew collection. It 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).