Celebrate Love Data Week 2025

Love Data Week is an international celebration of data first established in 2016 with the aim of promoting good research data management strategies, sharing data success stories, and raising awareness about data equity and inclusion. MRU Library joins the celebration from February 10 to 14, 2025 and our librarians have gathered a breadth of resources organized through five core themes for our community to explore. 

Lost & Found: Who Controls Cultural Data?

Data sovereignty and Indigenous, historical, and community data

• Ebook: Data Sovereignty: From the digital Silk Road to the return of the state (2023)
  • Examines how governments worldwide are asserting control over the internet, exploring the legal, political, and economic dimensions of digital sovereignty in the face of challenges posed by AI, e-commerce, and data localization. Open Access.
• Ebook: Counting Feminicide: Data feminism in action (2024)
  • Highlights the work of grassroots data activists in Latin America who document gender-related killings, challenging mainstream data science by centering care, justice, and the power of data feminism in the fight against gender-based violence. Open Access.
• Indigenous data sovereignty and policy (2021)
  • Explores how Indigenous communities worldwide are reclaiming control over their data, challenging government policies, and asserting self-determination to protect their knowledge, lands, and cultures in the digital age. Open Access.
• Website: Global Indigenous Data Alliance
  • A network of Indigenous researchers, practitioners, and advocates working to advance Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Governance by asserting Indigenous rights in data, promoting self-determined well-being, and reinforcing decision-making based on Indigenous values.
• Podcast: Voices of Sovereignty: Navigating Data Sovereignty and Governance for First Nations
  • Canadian podcast that explores the challenges, opportunities, and best practices surrounding First Nations data ownership, control, access, and possession.
• Ebook:  Privacy concerns surrounding personal information sharing on health and fitness mobile apps
  • Explores the security risks, legal implications, and psychological motivations behind data sharing in health and fitness apps, highlighting privacy vulnerabilities, data breaches, and the role of language in shaping public perceptions.

Data for Good and Data for Evil

Stories of data used for justice and/or exploitation

• Print Book: Weapons of math destruction : how big data increases inequality and threatens democracy (2016)
  • Reveals how biased algorithms in hiring, policing, education, and finance reinforce inequality and threaten democracy, making the case for greater transparency and accountability in big data.
• Youtube Channel: Data & Society Research Institute
  • A nonprofit research institute studying the social implications of data-centric technologies & automation.
• Ebook:  Selling the American People: Advertising, Optimization, and the Origins of Adtech (2023)
  • Uncovers the hidden history of digital advertising, revealing how data-driven surveillance and optimization strategies in marketing originated long before the internet, shaping the modern adtech industry and fueling today's surveillance capitalism. Open Access.
• Ebook: Data-Driven Innovation in the Creative Industries (2024)
  • Explores how digitalization and data-driven technologies are transforming the arts, cultural, and heritage sectors, highlighting the opportunities and challenges of integrating data into creative industries worldwide. Open Access.
• Ebook:  New Perspectives in Critical Data Studies: The Ambivalences of Data Power (2022)
  • Explores the complexities of data power, examining global data infrastructures, state surveillance, data justice, and grassroots resistance to tech industry dominance in an increasingly data-driven world. Open Access.

The Algorithm Made Me Do It

How AI and algorithms shape our lives

• Ebook:  Business Data Ethics: Emerging Models for Governing AI and Advanced Analytics (2024)
  • Considers how leading companies manage AI and data ethics, highlighting the structures, training, and accountability measures they use to operationalize ethical principles and mitigate risks like bias, privacy invasion, and societal harm. Open Access.
• Ebook:  Algorithmic Rights and Protections for Children (2023)
  • Investigates how digital platforms and AI shape children's online experiences, advocating for ethical design, algorithmic justice, and policies that center children's rights, agency, and equity in the digital age. Open Access.
• Youtube Channel:  Algorithmic Justice League
  • Advocates for equitable and accountable AI by raising awareness, empowering impacted communities, conducting research, and mobilizing policymakers and industry to address AI harms and biases.
• Print Book:  The algorithm: How AI decides who gets hired, monitored, promoted, and fired and why we need to fight back now (2024)
  • Exposes how AI-driven hiring, workplace surveillance, and predictive analytics shape careers—often unfairly—while urging us to challenge these opaque systems before they redefine the future of work.

DIY Data: Take Control of Your Info

Empowering people to manage, protect, and use their own data

• Video:  Secrets in your data (2024)
  • Looks at how personal information is collected, sold, and used online, revealing the hidden mechanics of data tracking and the potential for a new web that gives users greater control over their digital privacy.
• Ebook:  Human Privacy in Virtual and Physical Worlds: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (2024)
  • Brings together experts from multiple disciplines to explore the evolving challenges of privacy in the digital age, revealing how surveillance, data collection, and social structures impact personal freedoms across both virtual and physical spaces. Open Access.
• Print and Ebook:  Millions, billions, zillions: Defending yourself in a world of too many numbers (2018)
  • A practical and entertaining guide to spotting misleading numbers in media, advertising, and politics, equipping readers with simple tools to critically evaluate data and avoid being deceived.
• Government of Canada Website:  The Digital Privacy Playbook
  • Provides essential guidance on integrating privacy considerations at every stage of a project, helping organizations plan, implement protections, and engage privacy experts to ensure compliance and security.
• Ebook:  Our Data, Ourselves: A Personal Guide to Digital Privacy (2022)
  • A practical guide to understanding and protecting personal digital privacy, offering insights on data ownership, corporate and government surveillance, social media risks, and strategies for safeguarding sensitive information in everyday life.

Data in Action: Tools & Know-How

Practical skills and training

• Podcast:  DataFramed
  • Join industry and academic experts to explore the inner workings of the data science industry.
• Ebook: Critical Datafication Literacy: A Framework and Practical Approaches (2024)
  • Reviews how data technologies shape society and argues for a more critical, empowering approach to digital education, providing a framework to help individuals navigate and challenge the impacts of datafication in their lives. Open Access.
• Open Educational Resource:  Real Analysis of Data in Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour (2024)
  • This resource offers a diverse collection of research scenarios with realistic datasets, R analysis scripts, and practice questions, all inspired by current research in psychology, neuroscience, and behaviour at McMaster University.
• Ebook:  The data journalism handbook: Towards a critical data practice (2021)
  • Explores the evolving field of data journalism, offering insights from leading researchers and practitioners on how data is gathered, analyzed, and used in newsrooms to shape public understanding of the world. Open Acess.
• Government Website:  Responsible use of artificial intelligence in government
  • The Government of Canada’s Responsible Use of AI in Government initiative establishes guidelines, ethical principles, and compliance tools to ensure AI technologies are used transparently, fairly, and accountably in public services and decision-making.
• Ebook: Protecting your privacy in a data-driven world (2022)
  • Studies the tension between data privacy and public good, examining how personal data is collected, protected, and used in policymaking while advocating for equitable privacy safeguards and responsible data access.

Further Reading:

• Explore the Library's Statistics and Data resources
• Browse our display collection on all things data on Floor 2 of the Library.
• Read our Librarian Brian Jackson's 2024 blog "The Impact of Open Data"
• Visit the Love Data Week official website to find events, resources and more.

Library book picks to round out your summer reading list

The end of the winter semester and a shift to warmer weather means that many Calgarians are spending more time reading outdoors — and our MRU library team is no exception! 

With so many books to choose from, including those you can find in the Library’s Recreational Reading Collection, it can be difficult to pair down that ever-growing reading list. Luckily, our library team is here to help. From harrowing histories to myth-filled whodunnits and tantalizing thrillers, here are the top recommended summer reads hand-picked by our library team.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir

ISBN: 0593135202

Publication Date: 2021-05-04

Picked by: Taylor McPeak

“Those looking for the perfect blend of science geek, heart, and pondering the intriguing questions about what’s beyond our world will love Project Hail Mary. I listened to the audiobook and slowed down my usually fast narration speed because I didn’t want it to end!"

 

The Final Girl Support Group by Grady Hendrix

ISBN: 9780593201237

Publication Date: 2021-07-13
Picked by: Tara Fitzpatrick

“I just finished The Final Girl Support Group by Grad Hendrix. I highly recommend it for anyone who was/is a big fan of the slasher movies of the 80s and 90s, like Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream. I couldn’t put it down!”

 

Lightlark (the Lightlark Saga Book 1) by Alex Aster

ISBN: 1419760866

Publication Date: 2022-08-23

Picked by: Tara Fitzpatrick

"It’s one of those books you wish you could read again for the first time."

 

 

We Keep the Dead Close by Becky Cooper

ISBN: 1538746859

Publication Date: 2021-09-14

Picked by: Geoff Owens

“The notorious, myth-filled, and now solved tale of the murder of a promising anthropology grad student is a must read.”

 

 

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

ISBN: 9781443428477

Publication Date: 2014-07-03

Picked by: Alice Swabey

“Set in 17th century Amsterdam, this excellent story of race, class, sexuality and gender roles carries a bit of suspense with a dose of early modern European history on the side.”

 

 

The Beekeeper of Aleppo by Christy Lefteri

ISBN: 9780593128176

Publication Date: 2020-06-23

Picked by: Alice Swabey

"It is the story of two Syrian refugees finding their long and painful way to safety. It is gut wrenching and beautiful all at once."

 

 

 

The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen by Stephen R. Bown

ISBN: 1553659376

Publication Date: 2019-05-02

Picked by: Jasmine Goodman

"A very interesting biographical account of [Amundsen's] polar expeditions to the South Pole, the Northwest Passage and his failed rescue mission to the North Pole. I found it very fascinating how he planned and executed his travels against impossible odds considering the technology at the time. A good read for those interested in history or arctic exploration."

 

The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

ISBN: 0609608444

Publication Date: 2003-02-11

Picked by: Jasmine Goodman

"This historical non-fiction book traces the steps of H.H. Holmes, a murderer who took advantage of the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago 1893 for his killing spree. Juxtaposed to such evil is the story of the Fair's architect, Daniel Burnham, and his ambitious vision to transform Chicago into a world class city rivalling Paris. Doesn't read like a boring, dry history book because it is wonderfully written and well-paced. A real page-turner."

 

The Winter Knight by Jes Battis

ISBN: 9781770417205

Publication Date: 2023-04-04

Picked by: Cari Merkley

"A contemporary fantasy with elements of mystery in which the main characters are reincarnations of Arthurian legends and other mythical creatures. I particularly enjoyed the fact that it is set in Vancouver and most of the characters are connected to the university (e.g. the reincarnation of Gawain is a student, Morgan le Fay a Dean)."