Thanks to colleagues in Open Scholarship and Digital Library & Scholarly Technologies for their helpful edits and advice in writing this blog post
The UN Open Source Week takes place from June 16-20, 2025. Learn more and register for this event on the UN’s website. Here’s a description of the event from the organizers:
“UN Open Source Week 2025 facilitates global dialogue and collaboration on open source, digital public infrastructure (DPI), and the development of innovative solutions to global challenges. Since its inception in 2023, the event has captured significant international attention, reflecting strong demand for a UN-led forum on open source and digital cooperation.
“The event features a full week of networking, insightful panels, hackathons, and breakout sessions exploring topics related to open source, digital public infrastructure, problem solving, and digital cooperation. This evolved program will offer increased opportunities for ideation, co-creation, and meaningful networking in response to the ecosystem’s growing demand for deeper engagement. This is an opportunity to learn from and connect with fellow industry professionals while deepening understanding of open source and its global potential.”
What is open source?
The Open Source Initiative provides a comprehensive definition of open source. The primary components that make software open source are closely linked to its distribution. The criteria that the OSI consider essential are: free redistribution; inclusion of source code (and its integrity); distribution of license; a license that allows for derivative works, is not linked to a specific product, does not restrict other software, and is technology-neutral; and no discrimination against persons, groups, corporations, or fields of endeavor.
Open source at Columbia Libraries
Many workshops from the Columbia Libraries (PDF) include instruction about how to use open source software, including Zotero, QGIS, OpenRefine and Orange Data Mining. Workshops are also offered for students who would like to learn how to use programming languages such as Python or R. These languages are supported by large open source communities that create and distribute libraries and packages, extending the usage of the languages in the open ecosystem. Some workshops also include guidance on using GitHub repositories and strategies for how to license software so that it is open source. Columbia affiliates can request a custom instruction session at any time using this form and anyone can sign up for the Columbia Libraries workshops email on this page.
Columbia Libraries staff are also contributors to several important open source projects including Blacklight, Mirador, and Solr/Lucene. Beyond contributions to these open source projects, the Columbia University Libraries organization on GitHub currently shares 204 public repositories, the earliest of which dates to 2009. This code represents critical components of many different Columbia Libraries web properties including CLIO (affiliate access-only), Academic Commons, Digital Library Collections, and the Archival Collections Portal.
Open source events
In addition to the UN’s five days of events in celebration of Open Source Week 2025, the GitHub repo open-source-events from EverythingOpenSource shares upcoming open source events around the world and includes a calendar to which anyone can subscribe: https://jonamarkin.github.io/ose-calendar/events.ics. The public is also welcomed to contribute to the project in order to add their own upcoming open source events.
Open access publishing agreements through Columbia Libraries
Finally, beyond our support and adoption of open source, Columbia Libraries supports open access, open culture, and open infrastructure. This includes providing a number of Open Access Publishing Agreements that allow for Columbia researchers to publish in a range of open access journals for no fees or reduced fees. Like the open source events calendar, this list continues to grow, providing Columbia researchers with more opportunities to share their research openly with the world.
Esther Jackson serves as a member of the OpenRefine Advisory Committee