Creating civic data

What's the need?

  • As you advocate for sharing data, your library could set an example by sharing it yourself.

  • Data about your library can help provide insight into your community.

  • Historic information that could be used as data is often held in library collections, but not in machine-readable form.

  • People want to collect and create data themselves but often need support. Not everyone has specialized tools (such as air quality monitors) to aid in data collection.

Why the library?

  • Your library likely collects data for annual reporting that could also be of interest to the public.

  • Libraries have a long tradition of reformatting materials to support different forms of use, including microfilming and digitizing collections. Creating datasets from collections is a continuation of this work.

  • Libraries have the infrastructure for loaning equipment (like air quality monitors) and can reach a broad and diverse audience.

What you can do:

  • Create and publish machine-readable datasets from library collections, resources, or operational data

  • Loan equipment for citizen science data collection

Inspiration:

Resources you can use:

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