{"id":1026,"date":"2009-06-26T08:30:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-25T23:30:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/?p=1026"},"modified":"2009-06-26T08:30:36","modified_gmt":"2009-06-25T23:30:36","slug":"getting-local-data-to-the-world-and-still-being-funded","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/2009\/06\/26\/getting-local-data-to-the-world-and-still-being-funded\/","title":{"rendered":"Getting local data to the world, and still being funded"},"content":{"rendered":"

In my second last post, Getting Deeply Local at our libraries<\/a>, I suggested that libraries should focus on their deep human knowledge of their local communities and local data to provide services that cannot be provided by generic suppliers like\u00a0 Wikipedia or a supermarket offering bestselling books. In the post before this, Like a Virgin<\/a> , I gave the example of the German National Library\u2019s Personennamendatei<\/a> project working with Wikipedia to put their locally collected authoritative personal name data into Wikipedia.de .<\/p>\n

What Wikipedia has that libraries do not is reach. It is the seventh most visited site in the world<\/a>. Information there is far more likely to be found by the world – and probably our local communities – than on any of our library web sites.<\/p>\n

Here lies a quandry to me. If we want our local data to be more accessible, then populating larger, more accessed sites with greater reach will be the best service to our communities. But if we do this, and the data does not have Brand Library written all over it, how do we make sure our libraries continue to be paid to do this?<\/p>\n

Look at the Big Diary<\/a> online service offered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. I found out about it while watching Sunday’s the Einstein Factor<\/a>. The tagline is:<\/p>\n

An independent listing of events from around Australia. Explore, join up and contribute.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The events\u00a0 in the city where I live, Fremantle, in the next seven days are less comprehensive and quite different to our local library’s community information service, Freinfo<\/a>. But – which one has a more intuitive user interface and more awareness among Fremantle citizens? Today? In 12 months’ time?<\/p>\n

This is not a criticism of Fre-info or the Fremantle City Library<\/a> who do an excellent job and are well-regarded by our community. Fre-info is a service that plays to one of our potential strengths – collecting local data for our local communities.<\/p>\n

\"BigDiaryABC\"<\/p>\n

\"Fre-info\"<\/p>\n

\n

So what does a service like Fremantle City Library do? Does it populate the Big Diary with its clean, authorative data? Would that provide a better service to their community? It would probably be more findable and promote Fremantle to the rest of Australia more effectively. But would ratepayers then go to the Big Diary, not Fre-info? Does this matter? How would they justify continuing to fund a service that is now less used?<\/p>\n

What does an academic library do when it has local clean data in a reusable form that would enhance entries in Wikipedia about local geography, or climate ? Is a Special Library doing the best thing to maintain funding if it actively shows users how to set up the library link resolver in Google Scholar – when there are so many more relevant resources available from the library web site?<\/p>\n

I don’t know. I do know that libraries that want to both serve their communities best, and survive to do so, will have to come up with some answers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my second last post, Getting Deeply Local at our libraries, I suggested that libraries should focus on their deep human knowledge of their local communities and local data to provide services that cannot be provided by generic suppliers like\u00a0 Wikipedia or a supermarket offering bestselling books. In the post before this, Like a Virgin…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3BXdd-gy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/librariansmatter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}