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
    • Archiving and Preservation of Civic and Government Data
    • Glossary
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  1. Library Roles

Making civic data more usable

What's the need?

  • Data is often available but with barriers to use. Barriers include (but are not limited to) finding, obtaining, understanding, aggregating, applying, and contextualizing data.

  • Data providers and intermediaries need insight from users to help prioritize open datasets and tool development.

Why the library?

  • Your library has always helped to make existing information more usable and useful to its communities.

  • Library workers are uniquely positioned to know, communicate, and advocate for the information needs of their communities.

  • Library workers have expertise around the user experience of digital information. How do users prefer to search? To browse? To evaluate results for relevance? To download and use digital content?

What your library can do:

  • Author data user guides for specific datasets or on broader topics.

  • Create views of data that meet specific needs, for user groups, social justice organizations. One example might be creating analog presentations of data for communities that are non-digital.

  • Partner with civic data initiatives to gather user feedback for improved services

Inspiration:

  • Pittsburgh, PA: Western Pennsylvania Regional Data Center's Data User Guides

  • Somerville, MA: Tufts’s Hirsch Health Science Library guide, Health Data and Statistics

  • Durham, NC: Duke University Library's guide, US Economic Data, see "Local areas" for treatment of regional civic data

  • Boston, MA: Cataloguing Open Data: Open Data to Open Knowledge

Resources you can use:

  • Robinson, P., & Mather, L. W. (2017). Open Data Community Maturity: Libraries as Civic Infomediaries. Journal of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, volume 28.

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Last updated 5 years ago