Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect
Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 147 (2014) 126 – 132

ICININFO

Open Data as Universal Service. New perspectives in the
Information Profession
L. Fernando Ramos Simón*, Rosario Arquero Avilés, Iuliana Botezan, Félix del Valle
Gastaminza, Silvia Cobo Serrano
Department of Library and Information Science, Complutense University, Madrid 20810, Spain.

Abstract
The Internet provides a global information flow, which improves living conditions in poor countries as well as in rich countries.
Owing to its abundance and quality, public information (meteorological, geographic, transport information... and also the
content managed in libraries, archives and museums) is an incentive for change, becoming invaluable and accessible to all
citizens. However, it is clear that Open Data plays a significant role and provides a business service in the digital economy.
Nevertheless, it is unknown how this amount of public data may be introduced as universal service to make it available to all
citizens in matters of education, health, culture ... In fact, a function or role which has traditionally been assumed by libraries. In
addition, information professionals will have to acquire new skills that enable them to assume a new role in the information
management: data management (Open Data) and content management (Open Content). Thus, this study analyzes new roles,
which will be assumed by new information professionals such as metadata, interoperability, access licenses, information search
and retrieval tools and applications for data queries.
© 2014
2014 Elsevier
The Authors.
Published
by Elsevier
Ltd. under the CC BY-NC-ND license
©
Ltd. This
is an open
access article
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 3rd International Conference on Integrated Information.
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 3rd International Conference on Integrated Information.
Keywords: Open Data; information profession; Open Content; public information; librarians

1. Introduction
In the last decade of the 20th Century, the e-Government concept arose from applying information technologies
to governance functions in democratic countries that, although still quite vaguely defined, has improved efficiency
in managing government and providing citizens better services (Relyea, 2002).
One of the most visible results of the change is that application of new technologies has made a large volume of
information available to citizens and companies so as to improve the citizens' daily life (transport, health,
weather...) and that of companies that may use that data flow in their own technical, commercial and financial

1877-0428 © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/).
Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the 3rd International Conference on Integrated Information.
doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.07.128