Temple is Encouraging Public Access to Data
BY EMANI WASHINGTON
In honor of Open Access Week here at Temple, the library held an open event to discuss the many ways that the Library is increasing access to information. Open Access week is an annual celebration about spreading the awareness of open access internationally.
One of the ways that the library has been trying to increase public access is by making huge strides to try to preserve and digitize older books and documents.
Lead Technology Developer of Temple Libraries Chad Nelson, explains how Temple’s school of Journalism in the Klein College of Media and Production has partnered with Open Data Philly, a portal for civic data in Philadelphia.
“The idea is to get government data openly available and accessible to the public, but also so that city data but also some regional data,” Nelson said. “Anyone that might have data, that might be useful to journalist, to application developers, to government agencies, to any citizen that might want access to that data.”
Temple Press and Library, received a $82,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to help scholarly books in humanities that have gone out of print available to open access.
The Director of Temple University Press, Mary Rose Muccie, shares how the press and the university plans to use the grant towards open access.
“What we’re going to do is take hard copies, print books, print copies of these titles and we’re going to scan them,” Muccie said. “We’re going to create both PDF, and E-pub versions so that they can be read on readers, your phone, Ipad, your Kindle. We’re going to have scholars in the field write new forwards for the books, and those will type set and included in the new electronic versions.
The university’s press and the library are very committed to making sure that they do the best they can to make sure scholarly information is essentially barrier free and fair.
Temple’s Library realizes how important it is to make information accessible to not only students who attend the University, but they also want to give individuals around the world a chance to get that same knowledge and information just as easily.
