Take a look at the Government’s 10 Digital Design Principles, number ten is particularly interesting; make things open: it makes things better! In this spirit we’re participating in a week long coding festival at Manchester’s Young Rewired State centre, Madlab. It will act as a testing stage, a way to share ideas and unearth the potential of the data we hold. Watch the video for more on YRS;
We’re providing the data to the Local Image Collection, it has been made accessible courtesy of MDDA, and you can find more information on how to access it here. The collection contains over 80,000 images of Manchester, the original images are mainly photographs, dating from the 18th century to the present day. It is unique in the sense that it offers an insight into the social and industrial history of the city. It’s all very serious of course, but it also includes the down right ridiculous…
This article on what data can and cannot do is incredibly useful. Essentially hammering home the point that the value of data is the result of hard work of the developers who work with it (and the caffeine that they drink). It also draws attention to the flaws and inconsistencies which may be present and notes that data should act as a starting point for understanding a topic. I’d suggest reading The Five Stars for Open Data Engagement makes a very interesting read.
There are many hack events which centre on cultural/historical data; The National Archives Hack in March of this year produced a website built around the data from the @ukwarcabinet real time Twitter feed. Also of note are the History Hack Day and the Yahoo Openhack EU. We’ll be posting an update on YRS later this week. If you prefer real time, head over to Twitter and follow @mcrarchives, @YRSManchester and #YRS2012
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