Who uses libraries? Even in the stacks, there’s a political divide.; The Washington Post, October 4, 2024

 Andrew Van Dam, The Washington Post; Who uses libraries? Even in the stacks, there’s a political divide.

"When we took a look at the nation’s declining reading habits, our struggling bookstores and the prodigious number of books consumed by America’s top 1 percent of readers, scores of you wrote in with a singular question: What about the libraries?!

You people sure do love libraries! You wanted to know everything. Who are the biggest library users? How many of our books do we get from libraries? What else do we use libraries for?

We scoured all the government sources we could think of before turning to the cabal of polling prodigies over at YouGov to see what they could gin up.

As usual, YouGov exceeded our expectations, asking at least 50 library-related questions of 2,429 U.S. adults in April. They touched on just about everything: librarian approval ratings, restrictions on drag queen story times, number of books read. They also asked about the library services we actually use, up to and including how many of us avail ourselves of the library restrooms."

Taking Pittsburgh’s Open Data on the Road; Government Technology, May 8, 2017

Robert Burack, Government Technology; 

Taking Pittsburgh’s Open Data on the Road

[Kip Currier: 2017 marks the 10th year of this blog. This post is the 3,000th:  an illustrative "lessons-learned" case study of "grassroots" Open Data sharing between City of Pittsburgh data analysts and neighborhood residents.]

"This story was originally published by Data-Smart City Solutions.

When Pittsburgh developed Burgh’s Eye View, the city’s recently-launched open data application, the city’s Analytics & Strategy team visited 26 community meetings in early 2017 to gather actionable feedback and share the application with the community...

The team of analysts offered short presentations focused on how residents might use the application to understand what’s happening in their neighborhood, solicited suggestions for improvements and additional data to include in future updates, and engaged in one-on-one conversations to gain a better understanding of individual residents’ needs.

The team had to thoughtfully consider how to “filter out the tech speak” and present in an accessible and digestible way. The resulting takeaways from the team outline pathways for transforming city analysts into user advocates, show the value of building a broad constituency and taking iterative action based on resident feedback, and provide insight into why cities should pursue open data civic engagement in addition to user research."

Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion; FedScoop, 3/10/16

Billy Mitchell, FedScoop; Analytics key to agencies in big data explosion:

Lots of leading edge info and thought-provoking commentary from an impressive array of speakers at FedScoop and Hitachi's 3/10/16 Social Innovation Summit I attended at the Newseum in D.C. Good overview of Summit by FedScoop's Billy Mitchell:

"The federal government has seen an explosion of data at its disposal and has needed powerful analytics tools to put it to use, federal IT officials and industry executives said.

A single statistic drove the bulk of the conversation at Thursday’s Hitachi Data Systems Social Innovation Summit, produced by FedScoop: By 2020, analysts predict there will be more than 30 billion network-connected digital devices globally, all producing unprecedented volumes of data in a concept called the Internet of Things.

“Those devices, whether it be the phones we use, the cars we drive in, the medical devices used to keep us healthy, the buildings we work in, the ships and airplanes that protect our country, they’re all generating data, and it’s a question of how do we take that data and really put it to use?” said Mike Tanner, president and CEO of federal for Hitachi Data Systems...

While that data brings with it endless opportunities, it also complicates things, particularly because humans alone are unable to do much with such massive data sets."