README: Digital News from The New York Public Library

 

README

We are excited to share the first issue of README, a new e-newsletter covering digital happenings from around The New York Public Library. If you would like to receive future issues by email, add your email address now.

Meet Tony Ageh, Chief Digital Officer

Our new Chief Digital Officer, Tony Ageh, joined the Library in April after more than a decade at the BBC. We'll be sharing more about his vision for the Library's digital strategy in upcoming issues of this newsletter. In the meantime, we invite you to learn more about Tony's experience and accomplishments, check out his recent interview in Library Journal, and read on for a note from him.

From Tony:
 
Tony Ageh
Tony Ageh
Since coming to the Library in April, I've had many conversations with my new colleagues across the organization, especially the teams that play roles in how we serve our users digitally, from the online catalog to our digital collections.

Just as importantly, I've looked to other staff and our users to tell me about what's working, what's not working, and what's needed most, as well as their hopes for the Library's digital future. I'm evaluating the areas we need to prioritize first and taking stock of the resources we have and those we need.

I don't have all the answers yet, but I do know that I won't be able to resolve these big questions alone. I invite you to join me on this journey, sharing your feedback, ideas, and expertise. In the coming months, we are rolling out a new e-reader app, an upgraded search tool, and other enhancements to our website, all of which originated because of feedback from Library users. It's absolutely critical to our work.

This newsletter will be one of many ways we'll discuss our ongoing work and where we're headed. You'll see some highlights and upcoming events below. I look forward to staying in touch.

Tony Ageh, Chief Digital Officer
The New York Public Library

Making Hundreds of NYC Stories Accessible, One Word at a Time

Oral History Project

After years of gathering oral histories in order to preserve the rich and constantly changing history of New York City, the Library's Community Oral History Project has over 1,000 audio stories, with more on the way. But like many institutions with audio collections and archives, we have faced the challenge of how to make this audio both searchable and accessible.

Transcripts are the key to making audio archives web-searchable and accessible to people with hearing disabilities, but computer-generated transcripts are prone to errors. Human editing is required to make them into accurate, high-quality transcripts. People and computers need to work together.

NYPL Labs built a tool to facilitate this collaboration: an interactive editor that allows public volunteers to perform the final layer of polish and proofreading on computer-generated transcripts as they listen to the stories of our city. The Library also teamed up with storytelling powerhouse The Moth, which deployed our open source transcript editor on its own growing audio archive. This cross-institutional effort to open audio collections to the web is called Together We Listen and was made possible by a grant from The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Check it out and try editing a few lines today!

Open Audio Weekend, June 25–26

Open Audio Weekend Libraries and public media are putting a wealth of recorded audio resources online, but much of this content is beyond the reach of search engines and inaccessible to the deaf or hard of hearing. On June 25 and 26, the Library welcomes developers, designers, data scientists, audio producers, and others to a two-day hackathon designed to advance the cause of audio accessibility and explore future uses of media archives online. Help develop new ways of exploring and sharing audio from event organizers and partners, including The Moth, Pop Up Archive, Fresh Air, PRI's The World in Words, and more. Learn more or register.

ICYMI: News from around the Library

In January we released over 180,000 items from our digital collections into the public domain. We invited the public to remix these public domain items, like we did with this visualization we made. We received over 300 applications for the NYPL Labs Remix Residency, which was designed to spur transformative, interesting, beautiful new uses of our digital collections. Remix Residency finalists, who were challenged to "think bigger than one gif," will be announced soon.

NYPL created the Open eBooks app, which contains thousands of popular and award-winning titles that are free for children from in-need households. Open eBooks launched in March, in partnership between Digital Public Library of America, NYPL, First Book, and Baker & Taylor. Not every project launch gets a FLOTUS video, but this one did.

We've also been talking about how a blog becomes a book, our new Photographers' Identities Catalog, and the technology we built to turn our reading recommendations page into asearchable recommendations finder. And Marley Dias, the 11-year-old behind #1000BlackGirlBooks, visited the Library for a live Twitter chat.

Look and Listen

Gilbert Rohde rendering of Set #5 of Community Interests Focal Exhibit
Gilbert Rohde rendering of Set #5 of Community Interests Focal Exhibit: "Man freed in time and space" exhibit. Image ID: psnypl_mss_1284


Explore the Library's Digital Collections for more.

Voices of NYC

Voices of NYC is one of NYPL's recent audio projects.

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Comments

Patron-generated content represents the views and interpretations of the patron, not necessarily those of The New York Public Library. For more information see NYPL's Website Terms and Conditions.

Digital News

The New York Public Library Digital Collections website is always my 1st port of call for vintage images; some of the collections are amazing and I've spent countless hours browsing anything and everything. Buttolph's Menus is one of my favourite collections, needless to say MORE ephemera please!