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Tag: Creative Commons

  • Open Data Week 2026

    Open Data Week 2026

    As a librarian and a human bean, I am a big believer that:

    • Data and information should not be siloed
    • Data and information should be easily available
    • Data and information should also be freely available

    Let me clear that I am not referring to personal data (SSN, medical history, etc), which should be private and controlled by you. I’m referring to things like the Epstein files (yep, I went there), research, public data collection; all of it. If it impacts society as a whole, we should have access to it without issue.

    (This is why I donate to Wikipedia every month.)

    What is open data?

    Open data is data that is easily available, editable, and shareable to anyone at any time. Open data is governed by an open license.

    What is an open license?

    An open license is a license that allows copyrighted work to be reused, remixed, and redistributed. Copyrighted work is typically beholden to IP, trademark, and patent so an open license takes that content and allows free use of it.

    Open license is also known as open source license which is used within the open source software community.

    Creative Commons allows creators to design a copyright and use of their content using a variety of licenses, many which are open. This is one example of creating an open license.

    What is open government data (OGD)?

    While the uses and types of open data are vast, the heart of open data is data that is open government data or OGD.

    OGD is data that is created by governments such as maps, math and science formulas, chemical compounds, and more. The concept is that since this data, even down to the most minute use, affects a citizen’s every day life, it should be easily, and freely, accessible to use.

    Why is open data important?

    Advocates for open data say that such data as OGD that is being held by commercial and private use goes against the common good. This data, such as the list mentioned above, benefits society as a whole and should be easily accessible, reusable, and redistributed to further society’s needs.

    What are examples of open data?

    Examples include health stats, transit schedules, weather forecasts, research data, and more.

    Where can I get access to open data?

    The list of sites that provide open data is vast so here are a few examples:

    How can I participate in Open Data Week?

    You can check Open Knowledge Foundation’s list of events or do a search for “open data week events 2026 -ai” on Google.

    Resources

  • Happy Wikipedia Day!

    Happy Wikipedia Day!

    Do you use Wikipedia? I have been hard pressed to find someone who hasn’t used Wikipedia in any capacity. When I started teaching information literacy classes back in 2011, I was a big believer in teaching people how to use Wikipedia responsibly. (Much to the chagrin of my colleagues at the time.)

    I have an account but I have not edited a Wikipedia article, however, I do have a recurring donation every month to keep the site active. Plus it’s good karma!

    What is Wikipedia?

    To be sure, I’m shocked that I have to define Wikipedia since you’d be living under a rock to not know what it is! But just in case you don’t, Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia with the guise of containing all of human knowledge. You do not need an account to access Wikipedia or to read Wikipedia articles. You do need an account to create and edit Wikipedia articles.

    While content in Wikipedia is volunteer added (Wikipedians), the content must be peer reviewed and references must be provided to back up claims. 

    The concept of Wikipedia was that information and knowledge should be freely available and that no one entity should control it. Wikipedia was the offshoot of Nupedia and a competitor of Microsoft’s Encarta and Encyclopedia Britannica. You can also think of Wikipedia as a large online library of information.

    Wikipedia was launched on January 15, 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger. The site was made live two days after the domain name was registered. The first page was in English and as of early 2026, there are over 7 million pages in the English language with over 66 million pages overall. There are over 350 languages with articles in Wikipedia. 

    Wikipedia is a non-profit organization.

    What and when is Wikipedia Day?

    Wikipedia Day is the celebration of the birth of Wikipedia and its first edit. The celebration is held annually on January 15. 

    2026 is Wikipedia’s 25th birthday.

    It is also the same day that the Creative Commons was created. More on Creative Commons in a bit.

    How can I celebrate Wikipedia Day?

    In addition to donating money, creating an account, and editing articles, there are loads of other ways  to celebrate! Some locations, such as NYC, Chicago, and Seattle are having an in-person celebration. If you can’t make it, there is also a virtual celebration that will include talks and presentations.

    What is Creative Commons?

    The purpose of Creative Commons is to provide online resources such as videos, photos, and words, with copyrights to allow remixing and reuse of the content. Yes, you can disallow remixing and reuse of your work if you like. All Nerd Girl Industries workshops and slide decks “Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International” which means that my work must have attribution, it cannot be resold, and I do not allow anyone to build off my content. I choose this license because of how much energy, time, and brain power goes into my work and I do not want anyone to profit from it. However, my slide deck for “Not Your Mother’s Librarian” has a more open copyright since I give it away for free. The only thing I require for that slide deck is you give me attribution.

    Creative Commons was created on the same day as Wikipedia, January 15, 2001.

    Creating a Creative Commons license is free.

    You can learn more about Creative Commons here.

    What are other sites like Wikipedia?

    Yes!

    Wikipedia and its related sites are all hosted by Wikimedia Foundation (also started by Jimmy Wales). The Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization.

    Those related sites are:

    Whew! That’s a lot of freely available information! A lot of it I did not know existed until I started researching it.

    Wow! January seems to be a pretty big month in terms of freely available content!

    Yep! We have Public Domain Day on January 1st and the celebration of Wikipedia and Creative Commons on January 15th. The goal of all these organizations is to have content easily and freely available to use.

    How do you use Wikipedia and are you going to celebrate Wikipedia Day?

    References