What is the role of the public library in managing Big Data and bringing citizens to Big Data ?

Public libraries are about supporting citizens of all ages to develop and create the skills, knowledge and ideas they need to participate fully and independently in society. In their role as hubs for communities’ knowledge and memory functions in contemporary society, public libraries are also in a key position to provide services and education for individuals to link the collective and community level memory and information management to people’s personal information management strategies. This pilot project will look at the convergence of individual and public digital information with special emphasis on users’ interactive engagement in digital collections in the context of Turku City Library. The project is based on previous research on a new participatory and user created information society (Holmberg, Huvila et al 2009; Widén & Holberg 2012; Huvila et al 2013) with aspects on why and how people engage in this information environment (Widén 2010; Huvila 2011). New skills needed by citizens and professionals have been identified (Widén-Wulff et al 2009; Huvila et al 2013), and tools for evaluating the new Web have been developed.