摘要:In the age of electronics an open society – one in which questions can be asked, where critical thinking is not just permitted but encouraged and where investigation rather than ideology is used to seek out the truth about the world (the open society according to Karl Popper) – has also to be an open data society because reusable, structured data has become the main machine for doing the heavy lifting of moving knowledge around, just as books move ideas around.An open library is one that embodies the Open Definition in its working practices, one that is available and accessible, open to all participants, and which offers services that can be freely shared.Such institutions are pillars of any open data society.