On May 11, 2006, the following announcement was made about an upcoming forum at the American Library Association annual meeting that will address issues related to Open Data.
During the past several years, Open Data has become a field of urgent interest to researchers, scholars, and librarians. With the amount of scientific data doubling every year, issues surrounding the access, use, and curation of data sets are increasing in importance. The data-rich, researcher-driven environment that is evolving poses new challenges and provides new opportunities in the sharing, review, and publication of research results. Ensuring open access to the data behind the literature will play a key role in seeing that the scholarly communication system evolves in a way that supports the needs of scholars and the academic
enterprise as a whole.
As Open Data moves to the forefront of scholarly communication, librarians, administrators, and researchers will be responsible for considering new access policies for data and data curation issues. This SPARC-ACRL forum will introduce Open Data as an emerging focus, explore the challenges of managing the data deluge, and aid participants in crafting their own digital data preservation and curation policies.
This discussion is arising out of the scholarly publishing movement known as SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition.) Their coalition consists of more than 300 academic and research libraries and likely include the libraries of many of our IASSIST members. The European members of this movement have a separate website at SPARC Europe.
IASSIST members should become involved in these discussions. Many of the Open Data issues are familiar turf for our members.
Contributed by Chuck Humphrey
