The New York Public Library has teamed up with Coney Island Brewing Company in Brooklyn to create a beer fit for a Founding Father – a porter based on George Washington’s handwritten “small beer” recipe, which can be found in the Library’s extensive collections. The two institutions are brewing a very limited amount of “Fortitude’s Founding Father Brew” to toast the 100th birthday of the Library’s landmark Stephen A. Schwarzman Building on 42nd Street.

“This partnership is a fun and unique way to bring our awe-inspiring collections to life,” said Ann Thornton, Acting Andrew W. Mellon Director of the New York Public Libraries. “Not only will it give people a rare opportunity to experience history first-hand, but it will shine a spotlight on the incredible depth and breadth of our collections. We have a treasure trove of materials that can be accessed by the public and used to advance the worlds of scholarship, literature, invention, creation . . . or even beer-making. It’s a perfect message to send on the 100th birthday of our Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, which houses millions of these precious items. Cheers!”

“To Make Small Beer,” reads Washington’s recipe. “Take a large Siffer [Sifter] full of Bran Hops to your Taste. Boil these 3 hours then strain out 30 Gall[ons] into a cooler put in 3 Gall[ons] Molasses while the Beer is Scalding hot or rather draw the Melasses (sic) into the cooler & St[r]ain the Beer on it while boiling Hot. let this stand till it is little more than Blood warm then put in a quart of Yea[s]t if the Weather is very Cold cover it over with a Blank[et] & let it Work in the Cooler 24 hours then put it into the Cask — leave the bung open till it is almost don[e] Working — Bottle it that day Week it was Brewed.” The recipe sits along with Washington’s Farewell Address and other items belonging to him and his family in the Library’s Manuscripts and Archives Division.

Tastings of the beer will be served to guests at the Library’s Centennial gala on May 23 — exactly 100 years after “The People’s Palace” opened in 1911. See full press release here.

The presentation was called “Ensuring Relevance: Library Identity in a Digital Landscape”. Josh is moving NYPL forward in some really interesting directions. One of the most interesting things he described about the Digital Strategy group at NYPL is the nature of their relationship to the IT department at NYPL.

Josh’s description of that relationship: “a line was drawn.” Everything at the software application level up is Digital Strategy department territory, and everything from the hardware down is a piece of the institutional infrastructure. Making this distinction essentially moves quite a bit of technology into the programmatic side of the house, and really sets the stage for librarians to use a whole new toolbox to interact with their patrons. He spoke to the idea that “blogging and participating in online communities should be a part of librarians jobs.” He invoked concepts like “going to the places where our patrons are rather than making them come to us.” That has always been a traditional line in outreach strategy, but it takes on a whole different meaning when we are talking about library presence on the now fully socialized web.

Here’s a supporting excerpt from Michael Stephen’s ‘Changing Role of IT’ chapter of his blog post ‘Ten Trends & Technologies for 2009’:

“Librarians will play active roles in IT governance in their institutions. The days of a locked door that no one but IT personnel is allowed to enter will be gone. And – LIS education must address the changing needs of the IT/Library hybrid and enhance the skill sets of emerging grads. People skills, negotiation skills and enabling effective communication across all levels of an institution will be very important for these new IT/Librarian professionals. The days of hunching over code in a basement office may be fading.”

I’m also going to quickly plug an exciting Metropolitan Library Council event featuring the Chronicle of Higher Education’s TechTherapy about this timely topic.

Myself, I’m pretty excited to see projects originating in public libraries pop up all over the web: whether the content was made by the staff or the patrons. I’m excited to see library brands become user-defined, malleable, transient, and meme-like. I’m also really pleased to see institutions like NYPL making an effort to support that kind of library work via their organizational structure, policies, and job descriptions. Shifting resources toward digital projects is tough, especially when resources are scarce and core services like providing access to books remain identity-driven activities for the library. My feeling is that public libraries with dwindling funds should start adjusting policies and job descriptions to support digital initiatives, and in turn position themselves well to shift their resources after this recession. I trust the good will and intentions of public librarians to naturally create this library presence on the web as long as they are encouraged to do so by their supervisors, policies, and job requirements. Restrictive policies just plain need to disappear.

Not every library offers titles like ‘Digital Producer’, but EVERY librarian has the potential to be a digital producer. That is the beauty of these here interwebs. The webs are easy for us to produce things on now. It is that simple, we just have to do it.

I’ve taken all of the comments from this article and removed names, numbers, the terms “NYPL”, “library”, “libraries”, and “public” and used Wordle to create a cloud of the most popular words written in by NY Times commenters.  What better way to determine the public perception and their issues with the public library? Well, reading the comments and thinking about them is pretty important, but this offers another way to think about it.  Readers of the NY Times, fans and critics alike of the NYPL: in your own words, here are your issues.  Enjoy.