How local organizations leverage data and information to meet community challenges in key areas such as health, literacy, education, governance, economic/workforce development is critical to how communities move forward. As part of a project funded by the State Library of Pennsylvania, the Information Policy & Access and Center for the Advanced Study of Communities and Information in the iSchool at the University of Maryland will work with libraries, local governments, civil society, and others in the Pittsburgh area to bring these communities together to focus on data and information ecosystem issues.
The project focuses on central issues of building data and information communities such as:
- Data infrastructure;
- Organization of data and data communities;
- Identification of key data sources and resources;
- Data frequency and quality;
- Data curation; and
- Use and impact of data.
A key aspect of this study is to explore the roles of libraries in supporting community information and data needs.