Open Library (openlibrary.org) is a non-profit, open source, digital public library, hosted by the Internet Archive, which lends millions of ebooks to millions of patrons each year, and is made possible by volunteers, like you, from more than 8 different countries (US, NL, NZ, ES, IN, UK, DE, GR, CA).
Open Library hosts an invite-only community chat room on Slack where book lovers and contributors can stay updated, ask questions, and collaborate towards improve OpenLibrary.org.
When you request to join a project using the form, they will send you a slack invite and an invitation to their weekly community calls. It probably wouldn’t hurt to let them know early that you’d like to work on Open Library for this year’s hackathon, then you can join in on one of their weekly meetings to ask any questions and make sure everything is set for November 8th.
Link to Open Library’s github: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues
Link to Open Library’s volunteer page: https://openlibrary.org/volunteer
You can sign up using their volunteering form here.
During the day of the conference, you can contact Mek directly with questions at mek @ archive.org.
“Choose Your Character”
The Open Library has numerous projects and 5 specific types of roles that you can jump into easily if you would like to volunteer.
They are summarized below, but you can read about them in more detail on their “Volunteering @ Open Library” page if you decide that you want to get involved.
These are 5 different paths and projects to choose from, should you decide you want to jump in and start working on the project.
1. Librarian:
Open Library’s book catalog has millions of books and thousands of data errors. Sometimes author names are misspelled, book covers are missing, or works and authors are duplicated or conflated. Librarians work together and communicate using our Slack chat channel to identify and fix data issues in our catalog.
If you’ve ever been interested in programming scripts, Open Library’s engineering team has written guides and created basic tools to empower librarians to start fixing common problems at scale.
Your contributions will help patrons find the books they are looking for, ensure patrons receive accurate data, and that our engineering team has the right feedback to build thoughtful tools for librarians and our greater Open Library community.
Learn more about Librarianship here: https://openlibrary.org/about/lib
You will need these “Librarian Resources” to work on these projects: https://openlibrary.org/librarians
If you think this might be a good project for you to work on at the hackathon, contact them using their volunteering form here.
2. Communications & Outreach
As a library, we’re excited about how we’re making our resources discoverable and accessible to book lovers worldwide.
They are always in need of volunteers interested in working on projects and programs that intersect communications, technology, and digital librarianship. As part of their communications team, opportunities include distilling complex topics to align with our blog writing guidelines, engaging with community members and patrons, and sharing ideas for future programs.
If you think this might be a good project for you to work on at the hackathon, contact them using their volunteering form here.
3. Software Engineer
Want to write code that empowers million of book lovers to discover books they’ll love? Each year, scores of volunteers help fix bugs on OpenLibrary.org and architect new features and programs that reach thousands of patrons. (For instance, the Reading Log (https://blog.openlibrary.org/2017/12/27/a-holiday-gift-from-open-library-introducing-the-reading-log/) has been used more than a million times by readers to track their reading progress!)
The Open Library team has instructions for setting up your development environment (https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary#installation) and also a few handpicked github tasks that you can get started with.
If you think this might be a good project for you to work on at the hackathon, contact them using their volunteering form here.
4. Designer & User Researcher
Does OpenLibrary.org look like it’s from the the 90’s? Help them fix that!
If you think this might be a good project for you to work on at the hackathon, contact them using their volunteering form here.
5. Translator
Help Open Library better serve an international audience and increase availability and accessibility across the globe by contributing as a translator. Translating parts of the website into other languages enables more people all over the world to use Open Library.
Here is the translator guide they’ve set up for this project: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/blob/master/openlibrary/i18n/README.md
A special ask: Help them translate their website into Nepali. If you can help please follow this link to learn more: https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/issues/791
If you think this might be a good project for you to work on at the hackathon, contact them using their volunteering form here.
See you at the hackathon November 8, 2026 – either in person at the Internet Archive or remotely!