The Knight Foundation News Challenge Entries That I Have Applauded

The Knight News Challenge has been issued and it's about libraries:
How might we leverage libraries as a platform to build more knowledgeable communities? 

I'm reviewing these entries because I think some of them might prove useful in a paper I'm currently writing. There are some reoccurring themes to the entries that I think are quite telling.

Of the 680 entries, there's some wonderful ideas that need to be shared. Here are some of the proposals that I've applauded:

• The Library Freedom Project: Bringing Privacy Education and Digital Tools to Local Communities Through Libraries : The Library Freedom Project teaches librarians about privacy rights, law, and tech tools to protect patrons from dragnet surveillance.
  
  
• OpenArchive: Uniting Libraries and Archives to Empower Engaged Citizens: We want to create a world where a people’s history is the primary history; where we leverage the resources of libraries and public interest organizations to collect, preserve, and amplify local citizen media
  
   
•  Making the Invisible Visible: a digital overlay on the in-library visit that combines mobile technology with location based sensors to reveal the full riches of the public library to our communities: A context-aware mobile application that intelligently reveals previously hidden resources and opportunities based on your locations, interests and actions as you walk through the library.
  
  
• NYC Space/Time Directory: Community-Driven Urban History With The Ease Of Google Maps : The NYC Space/Time Directory does for old New York what Google Maps does for modern cities, turning historic maps and data into time machines.
  
  
  
• New models for creating open digital television libraries -- starting with the Marion Stokes Collection, the largest private collection of U.S television news : Starting with the historic Marion Stokes Collection, the Internet Archive will add to its free and open research library of television news--creating cost effective processes, technology, and digital access to historic videotapes and sharing this model with others.
  
  
• Empowering libraries to hear all voices: Loomio breaks down barriers to inclusive library-centered community engagement by making online participation disability-accessible.

• Librii: Digital Community Library in Africa : Librii’s mission is to stimulate cultural creation in developing countries by providing access to digital and physical resources.
  
  
• Beyond Asset Maps: Linking the Community to Vital Resources : Beyond Asset Maps: Linking the Community to Vital Resources will build a more knowledgeable community by creating a digital hub to connect vulnerable residents to critical services.
  
  
• Building Libraries Together: new tools for communities to help build digital libraries of the future: Give global communities the tools they need to save, manage and share their cultural treasures forever for free.
  
  
• Crowd-Sourcing a Digital Community Archive for the Future: We want to create a crowd-sourced community digital archive in Rochester, NY, to preserve records of the community's present for the future.
  
  
• How Libraries Can Work Together to Save the World from Link Rot: Perma.cc: Perma is a platform for libraries, authors and publishers to work together to ensure that online source materials are preserved and accessible to readers forever.
  
  
• Making Historic Software Eternal: Imagine an emulator that plays every computer program, game, and app in your browser - one click and you're in software history.
  
  
• Building Reading - Using data to add a layer of digital transparency to the exterior of the library: We want as many people as possible to see how libraries are sources of knowledge that support communities through sharing data about how the library functions -- in real time -- on the outside of the library itself.
  
  
• LOCAL: Local Online Communities And Libraries: LOCAL will empower public libraries to create, preserve, and provide ongoing access to local history collections of the meaningful online content documenting their communities.
  
  
• Safe Harbor Guide: Community toolkits, resilient neighborhoods: Libraries, neighborhoods, and federal agencies work together to create the first Safe Harbor Guide for collaborative disaster response planning.
  
  
• GITenberg: Modern Maintenance Infrastructure for Our Literary Heritage: Help libraries use and maintain Project Gutenberg public domain ebooks to serve their communities... with GitHub!
  
  
• Maptime Public Library, a.k.a Null Island Inter-Library Loan (NIILL): Maptime Public Library is an online library designed for map making beginners that connects resources for both geospatial and open source technology learning, all while teaching the basic terminology necessary to navigate this technical space.
  
  
• BookNode: Using Book Journeys and Traces of Readers to Build Community: BookNode uses journeys of books and traces of their former readers to extend the library’s reach, all while creating a playful and social urban experience that builds a strong local community.
  
  
• Reward your worst customers: the push to create repeat non-offenders: Let your worst customers keep their privileges in order to rebuild their library credit and become responsible customers.
  
  
• Make the Things that Measure the Future: Libraries and Open Hardware: Develop, deploy, and train librarians on open hardware devices that let libraries more effectively and efficiently serve their communities
  
  
• Civic Ticker: Libraries Mobilizing Citizens to Inform and be Informed: Ann Arbor District Library will pioneer a new way for libraries to inform their communities, transforming libraries from passive collectors to active producers of news and information.
  
  
• Upgrade Libraries' eBook Catalogs into a Publishing Platform for Indie Authors: Linking up all libraries' ebook catalogs so they become THE publishing platform for indie authors looking to be discovered by the most avid readers.
  
  
• An aspiration graph in every community: Libraries help build an “aspiration graph” in their communities that makes it possible to see what residents dream about being able to learn or do, and makes it easier for educators and entrepreneurs to build an economy of opportunity around residents’ expressed aspirations.
  
  
• Powers of Ten: Scaling up libraries’ capacity to build better worlds with code: I’ll develop a coding curriculum and teaching model specific to librarians’ real-world needs, so they have more ways to change the world.

For the purposes of my paper, I'm interested in the intersections of Open Data and Libraries. Here are the entries that touch on these two topics:

• The People’s Public Information Portal: Transform the California State Library into an open source center for public information and civic engagement by building a cadre of informationistas who'll foster an open data culture in state government: Begin creating a modern, open data, open source code portal housed in the State Library and, over time, connect it to California’s 1,182 public libraries to improve statewide access to government information, boost civic awareness and spur community action.
  
  
• The Librarian of the Future: Providing data analysis and visualization training to librarians in city, school, and college libraries, so that they can respond to the growing needs of their communities by making the library the seed incubator of data driven local change.
  
  
• An Open Data Roadmap for Public Libraries: Our goal is to establish a framework for libraries to better harness open data in order to improve resident interactions between government and civic organizations, improve data management practices at public and civic institutions, and enhance the library as a central place for civic discourse and information literacy.
  
  
• Nevada Data Access Portal (NDAP): Promoting Data Literacy and Nevada Data Resources to the Community: With the Nevada Data Access Portal (NDAP), community members will be able to access an external portal through UNLV Libraries to research and collect data. #dataliteracy #NVdata
  
  
• Libraries as Labs for Open Government: Convene Oaklanders from every neighborhood in Oakland’s public libraries, to experiment with technologies for open government and work with technologists to make these tools more useful to them and their communities.
  
  
• Pittsburgh’s Community Information Commons: Storytelling, Problem solving, Resource sharing: The Community Information Commons will be a shared knowledge base of community history, issues, and resources for problem solving, strategizing, and engagement using open source software (Collective Access) to curate and disseminate content.
  
  
• Leverage Library Taxonomies for Open Data and the Web: Use library skills to build new taxonomies that make open data more discoverable.
  
  
• L.A. Drone Cartography Project: We will give L.A. residents precise spatial knowledge about their communities with meaningful layers of historical and real-time data to help them better understand where they live.
  
  
• Visualizing the Smart City: Leveraging the City's open data, social media analytics and the Library's own statistics, we will create an installation that provides data visualizations that respond to user feedback and interaction.
  
  
• From open data to open knowledge: Using libraries to turn civic data into a valuable resource for citizens, researchers, and City Hall alike: We seek to turn the City’s Open Data collection into a true knowledge resource by working with libraries in our community to catalog the information and provide essential context to citizens and researchers.
  
  
• Data libraries: Let people search less time for reliable (local) data. How a metadata and open source software can help: A module in Datawrapper, where libraries can add metadata to a dataset - thus enabling search and re-use of such data.
  
  
• Turning Libraries into “Community Observatories”: We turn libraries into “community observatories” where residents work together to crowdsource data, make mapstories, and explore the historical evolution of their local communities.

And I would be remiss if I didn't tell you that I am also collaborating on this entry:

OVER UNDER AROUND THROUGH: a national library-library game to build civic engagement skills: OVER UNDER AROUND THROUGH is kinda like a dance-off challenge: libraries challenge each other – but instead of “show us your moves” the challenge is “show us how you would take on” actual community challenges such as economic disparity and racial tensions


In many ways, this Knight News Challenge is just such a dance-off.