Hello! Welcome to the first post on our METRO Fellows blog. This is a place where we will share our thoughts, activities, and experiments over the course of our 9 months as Fellows at the Metropolitan New York Library Council.  The following posts will be a mixture of text, audio, and video stories documenting our experiences as we undertake three different projects in collaboration with METRO and its member institutions.

We are:

• Katie Martinez, working with the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) Hamm Archives and Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Library and Archives;
• Karen Hwang, whose work will combine elements from the pitches of the Asian American Art Centre and NYARC, as well as a number of other institutions; and;
• Molly Schwartz, working with METRO.
  • Read more here.

As the inaugural cohort of METRO Fellows, our first couple of months have been a time of research and exploration. From its inception, the very structure of the fellowship was designed to be bottom-up and open-ended; in a way, this reflects the nature of METRO’s flexible role within a network of incredibly diverse institutions, connecting libraries, archives, and museums across the New York metropolitan area. From the beginning stage of the application process, in which there was an open call for ‘reverse-pitches’ from METRO member institutions, to the matching process between the fellows and our host institutions, to the continued evolution of our projects as they develop in response to the many amazing resources available in New York City, we have been encouraged to think outside the box. This has impacted the format of our residencies, which are structured with a fluidity that we hope will facilitate collaborations across institutions, and contribute to a stronger community of practice.

Right now we are witnessing METRO at a time of material change as the organization moves to a new office space on 599 11th Avenue that the METRO team is in the process of designing and renovating to serve the needs of its members today. It is exciting to be able to participate in this revamp from the ground floor. As you will experience in our later posts, each of our projects is different, but all of them reflect the challenges and opportunities facing libraries, archives, and museums in a time of technological flux. The fellowship is a model that many organizations are turning to, from the White House to Code for America, as a method for rapid, immersive projects that address specific problems and training for early professionals, especially in tech. We hope to take advantage of the potential for creative applications of tech in the cultural heritage sector in NYC that the fellowship model provides during our time here.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download