Growing Open Data: A Guide to Making Open Historic Data for Community Gardens

Abstract

Historic open data can be an asset to community gardens in land use disputes, the preservation and sharing of cultural traditions, and adaptation to climate change. Yet scholarship has not yet provided an accessible guide to the many issues of labor and technology involved in producing open data. This thesis addresses this gap by offering a guide to producing, preserving, and interpreting open data oriented toward community gardens from a public history perspective. This thesis examines the history of community gardens and related community data stretching to the Progressive Era, drawing comparisons to to that of historic open data in the gallery, library, archives, and museum (GLAM) world. The thesis also considers the worth of crowdsourcing and other volunteer labor models in data production, offers basic considerations for structuring and maintaining historic open datasets, and reviews the role of data visualization as a means of data communication and interpretation. Ultimately, I contend that open data is doable in public history and urgently worthy of consideration for gardens.