How to contribute
Adding a new dataset
If you are a data owner in the London public sector and you would like to have it listed on the Data for London Library, we would be delighted to do so. The metadata you provide will be used to display links your data resources – please see the best practice guide for metadata below.
We prefer to accept API endpoints to sources available online, which we can use to extract the relevant metadata (and thus keep up to date as the source changes). Please consider how your source API can map to the required Data for London Library metadata and contact [email protected]
If this is not possible for you, or if there are some metadata fields which your API cannot provide, we can still accept static metadata - please contact [email protected] to supply this information.
Please note that we cannot accept data resources themselves (eg excel files or words docs). Any resources need to therefore already exist online to be linked to, as they will not be stored directly by the Data for London Library.
If you struggle to prepare your metadata according to the guide below, please get in touch and we can work with you.
Datastore account / Publishers
If you publish data on the London Datastore, its metadata is already being picked up by the Data for London Library. If you are a Datastore publisher and your data is not being picked up, please report a bug.
Best practice metadata guide
You will be asked to provide metadata to list your datasets in the Data for London Library. At minimum, for each dataset you must provide:
- Title
- Description
- Date of last update
- Maintainer organisation
- Maintainer contact information
- Filetype
- File size
- Smallest geography
- Update frequency
- License
Title
The title describes the page and will be the first item seen when searching.
Make sure that titles:
- are an accurate description of the page, letting the user know they have found the right information
- are written in plain language and with user needs in mind
- include the geographic coverage of the data
- include a time period for what is covered by the data
- are written primarily for people, not just keywords
- contain the main keyword or keywords relevant to the page
- are unique from similar pages to avoid conflicting or competing search results
Titles should not:
- be excessively long
- contain jargon or technical language
- include abbreviations or acronyms unless they are well known, for example, UK, GLA or EU
Description
A description is a summary of a page that helps users decide if the content is what they are looking for. It appears in search engine results after the page title. A good description encourages people to select the search result to visit the page.
The description must:
- clearly summarise what the page is about
- be front loaded (in the first 200 characters) with key information
- be plain text
- make sense out of context
- include the main keywords, ideally at the start of the description
- not repeat the page title
Search will display a relevant part of this description where it matches entered search terms.
Examples of good title and description
Expenditure reporting for London Borough of Barnet: 2022/23
Monthly data detailing all payments made by the borough. Published one month in arrears as a separate csv file. Data includes the type of expenditure, the directorate and department, the vendor name, the amount and payment date.
For reasons of privacy some payments to individuals are not included in the list. Payments made via CHAPS and payments taken directly from our bank account (excluding agency costs) are not included.
Released in accordance with the Local Government Transparency Code 2015 for the financial year 2022/23.
Economic inactivity by region for England: July 2008 - April 2024
Monthly figures for London and other regions of England for residents aged 16-64 who are economically inactive. Provided as rates and numbers and adjusted to compensate for seasonal variations in employment.
Economic inactivity is defined as people not in employment who have not been seeking work within the last 4 weeks and/or are unable to start work within the next 2 weeks.
