Libraries Hacked is a project to promote library open data and the creative reuse of that data. Open data, and producing tech solutions with that data, has already proved to be of great benefit to public organisations. It is a benefit that can be particularly applied to libraries.
What is Open Data?
Open Data is data made public with a non-restrictive licence, available to everyone to use for any purpose. The 5-star open data plan provides guidance for open data quality. This includes just making stuff available (maybe a PDF - 1 star), to open formats linked to other datasets (linked open data - 5 stars!).
The UK is currently top ranked for open data by the Open Data Barometer, and 2nd by the Open Knowledge Foundation. This is a partly due to enthusiasts pushing for more national and local open data, and how organisations have responded to that demand.
Why make data open?
Studies point to wider economic benefit, such as an Open Data Institute (ODI) and Nesta report suggesting a 5 to 10-fold return on investment over 3 years. But for an organisation, benefits can be imagined by asking very simple questions. Are we using data to it's full potential? Could it be merged with data from elsewhere? Are those sources open and available? Do we have the time to do all these things or should we let other people have a go?
Barriers to a growth in open data have been a suspicion and fear of data requests, associating that process with transparency obligations. However, public and private organisations are realising that data-sharing benefits everyone, and a genuine external demand for their data could be of direct benefit to them.
What to make open? Bath and North East Somerset Council have an open data policy which states they will open up any data requested of them. The few exemptions are for data that is personal/sensitive, third-party owned/commercial, or that could pose a security risk. It's a policy that has led the community to dictate what they want, requesting real-time car park occupancy, cycling/traffic counts, mapping of green spaces, and much more. Far from being an exercise limited to increased transparency, this has resulted in a process of community engagement, using local data to create solutions to specific problems, as well as informing council policy. In other words, to the emergence of a citizen-led ‘smart city’.
What’s the link to libraries?
It's easy to enthuse about all this, but where's the link to libraries? Part of the problem is that there rarely is one. The 'smart city' agenda promoted by government has largely ignored libraries, but cities have been ‘smart’ since they've had public libraries. It is odd that a movement to inform citizens about their immediate environment, and enable community solutions, would exclude libraries, where such activity has always been promoted.
Articles often try to envisage a 'library of the future', imagining a changing role of libraries. But lack of library involvement in open data (which can often receive significant funding) is a departure from a historic role in the community, not just a future opportunity. Addressing this is not a suggestion of any change in focus or skills. Open data needs libraries, and existing professional library skills. Local and national open data portals, such as data.gov.uk are often a chaotic mess with few metadata standards, conflicting structures, poor categorisations and no conventions. They just require some of these information professional skills.
Library data
There is also a lack of open data about public libraries themselves, such as library catalogues, usage data, opening hours, or static and mobile library locations.
The benefits to libraries in offering comprehensive open data are clear. Current national (non-open) library performance data is based on historic opinions on what needs to be measured, and isn’t always successful in collecting that data. But where such measures attempt to collect specific data, an open data strategy simply releases data. It is the public that define the performance of their library. The data released engages citizens and encourages them to form their own questions of it. Rather than being told answers to questions they may not agree with in the first place, it allows individuals to produce their own insight.
With a lack of official open data, library-related data can still appear in many places. Ian Anstice releases regular news posts on Public Libraries News (PLN). Looking at these it's easy to see them as a dataset, with regular structure: local news by authority, changes, international news. A libraries hacked project queries PLN for new posts each night and extracts the individual stories. The data is then embedded into the sidebar of the PLN site as an interactive map to show the spread of news across the UK.
Sue Lawson (@shedsue) and Julia Chandler (@juliac2) worked to produce a Google sheet that listed the twitter accounts of public libraries and library authorities. A libraries hacked twitter gallery provides a view of those accounts with information such as when the account was created, last tweeted, and number of tweets/followers. So, you’re able to see now that @manclibraries started tweeting way back in 2007, and @hull_libraries have a massive 60,000 tweets - well over double their nearest challengers.
Hacks
Look online and you can find other examples of how people engage with library data. There are scripts to automatically renew library loans, library membership apps that combine all your library accounts (academic/public) into a single portal, and much more. These are small 'hacks' – creating tech solutions with enthusiasm and a spirit of exploration, and not being too bothered if it doesn't work out. They don't need to be serious policy-forming analysis. Simply engaging with data and creating 'mashups' with other data sources is often enough to see where more sophisticated solutions could be created, and where better data is required.
The popularity of engaging in this kind of hacking has led to hack events (‘hackathons’), often run by tech companies or groups of developers. Traditionally these have tended towards a stereotypical view of developers, and encouraged fairly anti-social working patterns (feed them pizza and beer through the night and they'll make software). But these events are frequently becoming more accessible, the organisation Data Kind run 'Data Dive' events, getting together a wide ranging group of developers, designers and data scientists to use those skills alongside community and charity causes.
To run hack events you need community spaces with a suitable working environment, Wi-Fi, experts on hand to give guidance on data, and a balanced and wide-ranging audience. In other words, they should be run in libraries, which have space, infrastructure, expertise, and are safe and trusted community spaces with widespread appeal.
So how do libraries get involved in open data? There are many local open data groups (often searchable on local groups sites like Meetup) who would welcome open data releases from local organisations, and more members. Newcastle Libraries have started an open data process, involving the local North East data community, and started running hack events encouraging use of this data. Just the first event included statistical trend analysis, geocoding digitised historic maps, converting digitised texts into web friendly views, and more.
A key to starting out in open data can be forming a policy. This not only gets sign-offs from key parties but can define boundaries, and help form a better understanding of your data. Holding an event with trial data can help in understanding what people are particularly interested in, and where more data is required. The outcomes of hack events are always surprising, engaging, and impossible to predict. Which is why library data, which is fascinating, rich, and varied is so suited to open data and hacks.
