Interested in what it would be like to digitize a good chunk of the New York Public Library?
If yes, join the good folks at the library who are experimenting and implementing new methods, protocols, and best practices and documenting it all on a very nifty blog, NYPL Labs. One of the brains behind these mass movements and migrations is Josh Greenberg, the Director of Digital Strategy and Scholarship. In many respects, it is a dream job for an academic (he got his PhD from the venerable Cornell STS Program and is the author of a forthcoming book, From Betamax to Blockbuster: The Invention of Movies on Video) because he can have a more dramatic and lasting impact on the world in comparison to most social science and humanities work, and in the process he and others will collect and gather all sorts of experiences that I am sure will become rich food for thought and future academic work on digitization, cultural preservation, and access.
wow! i`m in new york city and think that is an awesome effort! If there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.
Comment by nathan — October 12, 2007 @ 5:30 pm
Thanks for the shout-out, Biella. It is a pretty sweet gig, and I’m lucky to have such a great, engaged team to work with as we figure out the future of the NYPL. We all know that transparency requires conscious effort, so we’ll be trying hard to make the NYPL Labs as open and collaborative a space as possible, developing both for ourselves and for/with the broader community.
(And ’cause I can’t resist, one clarification: the book’s formal title is “From Betamax to Blockbuster: The Invention of Movies on Video” – the videophile bit is chapter one. Page proofs heading back to MIT in two weeks!)
Comment by Josh Greenberg — October 13, 2007 @ 10:08 am