Posted on by Andy Meyer

Chicago Data for Undergraduate Research

We are talking a lot about data, data literacy, and how North Park University can use Chicago data in the classroom. There are already a lot of courses using data in instruction and research so part of my work is figuring out what is already happening.

But I think the library can have a unique role in supporting data literacy in several ways:

  • collecting and curating sources of Chicago data,
  • providing tools and training to help people actually use and interact with that data,
  • raising awareness around campus about data and data literacy.

In this post, I’m going to focus on identify and describing sources of Chicago data.

Chicago Data Sources

City of Chicago Data Portal – https://data.cityofchicago.org/

The best place to start with Chicago data. A little overwhelming to use at first but this is definitely the place to start. I think it’s likely that we will need to provide a guide to this resource and/or find one that someone has already created online.

Cook County Data Portal – https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/

Data from Cook County. Datasets include financial data, health and healthcare data, and GIS data.

Chicago Public School Data – http://www.cps.edu/SchoolData/Pages/SchoolData.aspx

Data from the Chicago Public Schools that includes accountability reports, assessment information including scores from standardized tests, and demographic information.

Chicago Health Atlas – http://www.chicagohealthatlas.org/

Source of health data for the city of Chicago that is published on an interactive map.

Open City Apps – http://opencityapps.org/

Less a source of data than examples of how data can be used for civic engagement. Could be inspirational or a way to explore the data that supports each website.

Chi Hack Night Data Resources – https://chihacknight.org/data-resources.html

A curated list of resources from Chi Hack Night a group that works to “build, share and learn about tools to create, support, and serve the public good.” This page provides a broad range of data sources that might intersect with Chicago engagement.