NYPL Labs

We’ve spent the Summer and Fall of 2007 experimenting with blogs in several contexts:

Public Blogs

This pilot program aims to externalize staff expertise about core areas of NYPL strength into “subject blogs” that are both compelling and useful in unexpected ways (more on that to come). We’re figuring this out as we go along, inventing a new genre of librarians blogging with the broad resources of the NYPL squarely behind them.

Right now, we’re working on the design of the blogs while the bloggers themselves build up a foundation of posts – feel free to peek in while we finish developing:

• Cuisine and Cooking
• Maps
• Environmentalism
• Gaming
• Design
• DIY Culture

Internal Blogs

Early in the summer of 2007, ITG set up an installation of Wordpress-MU on an internal server; initially this was just a test to evaluate the usefulness of multiuser Wordpress as a blogging platform, but we decided to open it up to the general staff to see what people came up with. The project has operates as a quiet internal beta – the blogs are only accessible from within the NYPL firewall, or by authenticating with an iNotes username/password. As of yet, there have been no formal policies governing staff participation – to set up a blog there, one just goes to blogs.nypl.org and follows the instructions…if you’ve got an iNotes login, you can set up a blog. Until now, it’s been word of mouth, but we’re formulating a more substantial approach (including staff outreach and training), and should be posting more on that in coming weeks.