Open Data Librarian Training Series [Wednesdays]

Data increasingly powers the connected world around us and librarians are uniquely qualified to help their patrons find, manage, and use data for a wide variety of purposes.  Our Open Data Librarian Training series helps transform library staff into digitally-savvy data librarians.

This training series consists of five webinars covering basic data librarian topics and tools:

• Week 1: Finding Open Data - participants will learn about online data catalogs and search for data about their community in federal, state, local, and corporate data catalogs.
• Week 2: Cleaning Messy Data With OpenRefine - participants will learn how to easily clean "messy" data from third parties using the free OpenRefine data management tool.
• Week 3: Basic Data Visualization With Google Sheets and Charts - participants will learn how to use charts and graphs to turn boring reports into compelling visual stories.
• Week 4: Mapping Community Resources With Google Maps and OpenStreetMap - participants will learn how to create maps of local community resources and how to share those maps in the community.
• Week 5: Managing and Publishing Local and Open Data - participants will learn how to publish their library or government agency's data on their website or a public data catalog, as well as important considerations about data publishing.

Each webinar is followed by a 1-hour "open lab" session where the instructor will be available for questions and participants can share their data projects.  A group email list is also provided.

This series has webinar and live office hours on WEDNESDAYS from 12pm PST to 2pm PST [3pm EST to 5pm PST].