Open Data Book Club meetup

For January, Michael Easter will present on PDFBox (http://pdfbox.apache.org/), a tool that liberates data from the surly bonds of PDF. This topic has been requested by several members.

We'll also recap the provincial Directors' Forum that took place in December, and brainstorm some ideas/goals for 2016.

Light snacks will be provided. Please RSVP so we can plan for food!

Talk Summary:

When data is published in PDF, it is "arbitrarily detained (http://bit.ly/1S1zUcn)" : imprisoned in a state that is inaccessible to both programmers and engaged, curious citizens. In this talk, we'll demonstrate how PDFBox can liberate information from the confines of the ISO 32000 gulag! Data will go from being vaguely "open" to being Open.

PDFBox (http://pdfbox.apache.org/) can be used as a command-line tool with no code required. However, we'll illustrate very simple code examples that can (a) process files in bulk and (b) use targeted selection to read specific areas of the file.

Examples will draw on PDFs published by Island organizations. (The liberated data will not necessarily be published as part of this talk, pending a discussion about the Copyright Act.)