The New York Public Library is reimagining the “public” in its name and is calling on you to “help build new tools and services that have the potential to impact libraries everywhere”. The contest is open to all, so assemble your team of librarians and hackers, and create a project in one of the following areas:

Building apps with historical data: Create innovative educational apps with one-of-a-kind materials and datasets digitized from NYPL collections

• Build a historical ‘check-in’ app using old New York City atlases and other scanned materials

Hardware hacking: Build smarter tools for on-site use

• Engineer an outdoor 24-hour book drop that checks library books on the way in, and keeps everything else out
• Design lightweight scanning stations to digitize our legacy card catalogs

Data crunching/Machine learning: Process and analyze library data in creative ways

• Consolidate records in our online catalog that describe versions of the same book (e.g. editions, formats)
• Develop new methods to extract structured data from old card catalogs

Data visualization: Use library data to uncover new insights and tell new stories

• Visualize the flow of physical books and ebooks as they’re borrowed and read across the city
• Map the flow of letters from Founding Fathers from archival collections