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In a single generation\, humanity has created an u nprecedented public data inheritance:
Scientific data. Cultural herit age. Public Records. Publications. Digitized collections Environmental obse rvations. Countless forms of human experience have been captured\, connecte d\, and made accessible online.
But public data does not preserve its elf.
The infrastructure that allows data to remain accessible\, trust worthy\, and reusable is increasingly fragile. Ultimately\, it depends on t he collective commitments of people to carry it forward.
As AI change s how data is discovered\, synthesized\, and reused\, we face emerging ques tions about trust\, provenance\, and the relationship between human steward ship and machine-generated information.
Today we are presented with a fundamental question:
What will it take to steward public data at gl obal scale? And who will do it?
The Public Data Project is investigating new models of r esilient\, globally distributed infrastructure\, governance\, and mutual-ai d arrangements that will enable public data to endure across generations.
We invite you to imagine and build a different future with us: a data ecosystem where stewardship is a shared responsibility\, resilience is desi gned into our systems\, and all the world’s communities have the opportunit y to contribute to and benefit from humanity’s digital commonwealth.
JJ Dearborn is an Information Studies PhD researcher at th e University of Glasgow and Strategic Advisor at Data Futures. She works at the intersection of biodiversity informatics\, digital humanities\, and gl obal data infrastructure\, exploring how AI\, semantic technologies\, and o pen standards can turn historical scientific records into connected\, reusa ble data.
Her 15+ year career has spanned libraries\, museums\, gover nment\, and open data initiatives\, including the Harvard Museum of Compara tive Zoology\, Harvard Botany Libraries\, the Smithsonian\, the Harvard-Smi thsonian Center for Astrophysics\, the Peabody Essex Museum\, the State of Massachusetts\, and the City of Boston. Formerly she served as Secretariat and Data Manager for the Biodiversity Heritage Library helping to safeguard and advance the interoperability and computational use of more than 64+ mi llion pages of biodiversity literature. As a long-time advocate for the fre e culture movement\, she launched the BHL-Wikimedia Working Group and a uthored Unifying Biodiversity data to Sup port Life on a Sustainable Planet.
Originally from the San Franci sco Bay Area\, JJ now lives in Portugal with her family\, where her interes ts extend to the physical world – exploring how adaptive reuse\, biophilic architecture\, local food production\, and human economies might better coe xist with the living world.
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