Report: Open Data Literacy and the Washington State Library

From the Washington Secretary of State “From Our Corner” Blog:

The Washington State Library has been pleased to host University of Washington Information School (iSchool) Open Data Literacy (ODL) intern Kathleen Sullivan this summer. This was the second year of the open data internship program at the UW iSchool, funded in part by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). Open Data is the concept of freely-available, non-personal, machine-readable data.
This year, four iSchool students were matched up with the City of Seattle, the Washington Department of Transportation, and the State Library. The iSchool Students presented their projects at the ODL Internship Showcase at UW’s Mary Gates Hall on Friday, August 10.
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Kathleen discussed the role public libraries play in their local communities and how they are uniquely positioned to help organize and connect the public to local open data.Her research also extended to reviewing open data publishing across all 50 state libraries. Her conclusion? The Washington State Library “compares very well with other state libraries for public library statistics.”

Read the Complete Post
Direct to Kathleen Sullivan’s Summer Project Website: Open Data in Washington

During her time as WSL’s intern, Kathleen searched for and compiled open data published by the state’s counties and the largest city in each county to see how many provide open access to their data. This map is the result of her hard work.

See Also: Washington State Library Statistics/Washington Public Library Statistics

Filed under: Data Files, Funding, Libraries, News, Open Access, Public Libraries, Publishing