The State of Canadian Library Data

Abstract

At a time when the Canadian library community advocates for, educates about, and develops infrastructure in support of open data, we have been less than successful in establishing principles and practices that ensure our own data is open and useful. Data about libraries in Canada are limited in scope and often restricted in distribution. If we expect government agencies and academic researchers to devote the resources required to make their data open, we must be willing to do the same. Fortunately, the library community is well equipped to implement a program of open data that would benefit both libraries and the broader community.

Keywords

• open data
• academic libraries
• public libraries
• library data