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With the advent of the big data era, open data has become a worldwide wave (Jiang, 2015). Since the U.S. government’s open data portal was launched in May 2009, open data movement has been springing up rapidly around the world (Li, 2015). The report, named “Open data: An engine for innovation, growth and transparent governance”, was submitted to the European Parliament by the European Commission in November 2010, and set the strategy of coping with big data challenges based on open data” (Yu, 2014). In September 2011, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, Britain, and the United States jointly signed the Open Data Statement at the UN General Conference, and established the Open Government Partnership (OGP). In June 2012, as the first portal in China, the Shanghai municipal government’s open data service was open to the public. By August 2017, 53 countries and 165 regions opened their government’s open data, 75 countries joined the OGP (Data.gov, 2017), and nearly 20 local governments launched their open data platforms in China. Under the global wave of open data, as an indispensable part of the society, libraries are actively involved in open data research and practice, and face the changes and challenges of the times with an open concept and attitude. The open data service of Shanghai library (located at Shanghai in China, for its location see Figure 1) is one of the cases of open data practices of libraries at home and abroad. On the basis of the detailed introduction of the case, the paper puts forward some suggestions on its development through the comparison and analysis of the open data cases in foreign libraries.
Figure 1.
The location of Shanghai Library