What is a Hackathon?

At the Library’s student town hall meeting last month, a student suggested hosting a hackathon event at the Library. ‘Hackathon’ is a term that has become more popular recently, but to many it is still somewhat obscure. ‘Hacking’ refers to programming activity that builds a useful software application for a practical purpose. ‘Hackathon’ signifies a hacking marathon. ‘Hackfest’ and ‘codefest’ are the synonyms of ‘hackathon.’ The hackathon guide “GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) Hack-in-a-box” from the Digital Public Library of America states that a hackathon is a short, concentrated event between half a day to two days long in which small teams of participants with diverse skill sets design and build something, often by programming. Hackathons focus on collaboration and practice more than perfection. Often, people use hackathons to build quick prototype applications that they can develop into a mature applications later on. Hackathons are organized by many different groups, ranging from hackers, local meetups, hackerspaces, software companies such as Yahoo! or Facebook, to colleges and universities. Libraries often sponsor hackathons by providing a space or organizing a hackathon with a library-related theme.

Hackathon in Libraries

Over the last few years, many libraries have hosted hackathons. The Bodleian Libraries at Oxford University in the U.K. hosted a one-day hackfest celebrating the release of 25,000 texts from the Early English Books Online project into the public domain in March, 2015. This hackfest encouraged the participation of students, researchers from all disciplines, and members of the public with an interest in the intersection between technology, history, and literature who are interested in working together to develop a project using the texts and the data generated from them. In February 2015, York University Libraries in Canada hosted the Stacie Library Dungeon Hackfest with the theme of “hacking for a better world.” The New York Public Library Labs partnered with Readium Foundation and held two one-day hackathons named “Open Book Hack Day” in 2014 and 2015. At the “Open Book Hack Day” hackathons, participants explored ways of liberating public domain documents onto the open web; making it easier to get open-access e-books; and improving open e-book access/distribution for libraries, startups, and publishers alike.

Hackathon in Health Sciences

Hackathons are also used in the health sciences. From January 5 to 7, the National Center for Biotechnology Information hosted a genomics hackathon focused on advanced bioinformatics analysis of next-generation sequencing data. This event targeted students, post-docs, and investigators already engaged in the use of pipelines for genomic analyses from next-generation sequencing data. Four different working groups built pipelines to analyze large datasets within a cloud infrastructure. Japan’s National Bioscience Database Center and Database Center for Life Science have been organizing an annual BioHackathon since 2008, mainly focusing on standardization and interoperability of bioinformatics data and web services for improving integration, preservation, and utilization of databases in life sciences. The D.C. Public Library organized two Accessibility Hackathons to bring together young adults with disabilities and companies that develop accessibility solutions. The Accessibility Hackathons provided opportunities for collaboration and mentorship in the development new adaptive technology solutions.

The greatest benefit of a hackathon is the dedicated time and space outside of daily work, study, and projects where like-minded people can meet to share ideas, hone programming skills, and prototype ideas into working applications. Hackathons also offer participants the chance to tackle a problem of their own choosing, rather than one that has been assigned. The HS/HSL is open to the possibility of partnering with a campus or local group to host a hackathon. Please get in touch with us if you are interested in collaborating.