Civic Switchboard Guide
  • Introduction
  • About
  • Context and Concepts
    • An incredibly condensed look at the development of open civic data in the United States
    • Ways of thinking about data: Open data, civic data
    • Defining a data intermediary
    • Where do libraries fit in?
    • Selected Resources
  • Engaging Partners
    • Building libraries into civic data partnerships
    • Finding partners in your ecosystem
    • Common barriers to getting started
    • Selected Resources
  • Understanding Your Ecosystem
    • Mapping your Ecosystem
    • Measuring Health and Capacity
    • Understanding Community Data Needs
    • Selected Resources
  • Library Roles
    • Connecting data users
    • Connecting data producers
    • Showing the importance of civic data
    • Developing civic data literacy
    • Advocating for ethical, responsible, and accessible civic data
    • Making civic data more usable
    • Providing expertise on data management
    • Creating civic data
    • Using civic data
    • Publishing civic data
    • Archiving civic data
    • Increasing the library's capacity to do all of the above
    • Selected Resources
  • Maintaining Momentum
    • Finding resources to support civic data work
    • Support networks and communities of practice
    • Institutionalizing
    • Selected Resources
  • Case Studies 2019
    • Alaska State Library, Juneau, AK
    • Charlotte Mecklenburg Public Library, Charlotte, NC
    • Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX
    • Pioneer Library System, Ontario County, NY
    • Providence Public Library, Providence, RI
    • Queens Public Library, Queens, NY
    • Robert L. Bogomolny Library at the University of Baltimore, MD
    • Saint Paul Public Library, St. Paul, MN
    • Western New York Library Resources Council, Western NY
  • Case Studies 2020
    • The School of Library and Information Sciences Library at NCCU, Durham, NC
    • The University of Chicago Library’s Center for Digital Scholarship, Chicago, IL
    • Indianapolis Public Library, Indianapolis, IN
    • Spokane Public Library, Spokane, WA
    • St. Joseph County Public Library, South Bend, IN
  • Additional Resources
    • Civic Switchboard Workshop Materials
    • Open Data
    • Data Literacies
    • Partnerships and Community-Building
    • Library Roles in Civic Data Ecosystems
    • Guidelines for Creating Open Educational Resources
    • Archiving and Preservation of Civic and Government Data
    • Glossary
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  1. Library Roles

Connecting data users

PreviousLibrary RolesNextConnecting data producers

Last updated 5 years ago

What's the need?

  • Data users, even when living in the same region, are often separated. Users may be facing similar problems and may have solutions or complementary expertise to share.

  • Together, data users can be stronger advocates for social change, for improving civic data, for making additional data available, and for the creation of tools to make data more useful.

  • In-person connections can be fun and help strengthen local networks.

Why the library?

  • Your library is already a space for convening and connecting individuals to information.

  • Your library has the infrastructure and skills to build community around civic data.

What you can do:

  • Attend or host a civic data community event like a Data Day or a coding challenge

  • Promote civic data initiatives through the library's social media, events, and calendars

  • Facilitate a local data user group around a specific dataset or topic (ex. housing data, environmental data)

  • Host recurring data literacy trainings and workshops

Inspiration:

  • Pittsburgh, PA:

  • New York, NY:

  • Chapel Hill, NC: Chapel Hill Public Library's

  • Ottawa, ON: Open Data Ottawa's

  • Cleveland, OH:

  • Baltimore, MD:

Resources you can use:

Detroit Digital Justice Coalition: ("DiscoTech"): From that page, see the "How to DiscoTech" zine for detailed principles and specific guidance!

Roadmap to Informed Communities / Sunlight Foundation. “”

Murray, Brittany, Elsa Falkenburger, and Priya Saxena. “” Urban Institute, June 4, 2016.

Schlosser, Dan. “”

Pittsburgh's Data Day: Using Civic Data to Spark Hands-on Community Engagement
NYC Open Data Event Calendar
Open Data Hackathon
Open Data Book Club
Data Days Cleveland
Baltimore Data Day
Discovering Technology
Community Data Dialogues: Learn how to host events to engage non-technical audiences on open data
Data Walks: An Innovative Way to Share Data with Communities.
When ‘Awesome’ Is Isolating: Making Hackathons Accessible.