Working with a community organisation to create open datasets from records and files

Many community organisations maintain historical and other records and files that are potentially of interest to the wider community, including schools. They may lack the expertise, however, to make this knowledge available in suitable statistical formats. In this project a local group researched the history of 165 World War 1 servicemen. In addition to a published book, the data were used to create a spreadsheet that could be used by schools, and a website accessible to the general public. A local school investigated the data using Tinkerplots. Students were highly engaged and motivated by a real dataset that they could relate to through family connections. This case study paper provides suggestions for community organisations and statistics educators about working together for successful outcomes.