Civic Switchboard is an Institute of Museum and Library Services supported effort that aims to develop the capacity of academic and public libraries in civic data ecosystems. Learn more about the project at our website.
We are happy to announce that we are now accepting submissions for our first workshop!
Information about eligibility and submission guidelines can be found in our application.
Note: A copy of the application questions can be found at the end of this post
This workshop will take place before the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) meeting, on May 8th in Atlanta, GA. We’ll offer a similar version of this workshop in October 2018 before the Digital Library Federation (DLF) conference in Las Vegas, NV; that workshop will have a separate application announcement and process.
This workshop will bring together ten regional teams of two to explore the potential for partnerships of libraries and civic data intermediaries. Each team will include one library worker and one non-library civic data intermediary. Teams will learn to incubate new local data partnerships, get a better handle on your own civic data ecosystem, and learn from innovative peers across the country. We are also offering a limited number of complimentary conference registrations for the library partner on the team to stay on for the NNIP conference and act as a cross-pollinator.
If selected to attend, your team will receive a $1,500 stipend to cover travel and other expenses.
Please email us with any questions. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to our newsletter to receive updates and find us on twitter!
Applications Due: UPDATE – deadline extended to Wednesday, March 14th, 2018 EST 5 PM
Teams Notified by: March 26th, 2018
Application Questions (250 word limit per question):
Answers must be submitted through the application.
- Please provide a short description of your library organization.
- Please provide a short description of your civic data intermediary organization.
- Please share your perspective of the role of libraries in civic data initiatives.
- Please describe your existing engagement with civic data. You can include collaboration between your organizations (if applicable) or engagement as individual organizations.
- Please describe directions for collaborative work that your team has discussed.
- Are there other positions/departments/divisions in your organizations who will be involved in this partnership?
- Please briefly describe some of the other people or groups – formal or informal – who help your community access and use civic data (we’re calling this the civic data ecosystem). If you don’t know or there isn’t a lot going on - that is ok. Just tell us what you know!
- Cross-Pollinator Question - Please tell us what you are hoping to gain from the NNIP conference.
We may use your application responses to help our project team identify trends and learn about what is already happening between libraries and civic data intermediaries. We may share aggregated information from across all applications in public reports, but we won’t share any direct quotes from your application or identify your organization or city without receiving separate permission from you first.
