This paper aims to discuss the driving factors and practices of libraries participation and its roles in government open data, and to provide some inspiration for China. It is also expected to find out libraries’value in government open data. The paper is mainly based on analyzing practice of foreign libraries.It is concluded that libraries play an active role in data creation, collection, metadata schema design, data organization and publication, data integration platform constriction, citizen innovation and data literacy education, promoting government open data. The paper advocates for strengthening understanding of government open data, formulating metadata standards accorded to open data principles, enhancing cooperation with stakeholders, carrying out government open data activities, and building up data literacy education so as to promote the implementation of opening government data in China, as well as to release thevalue of government open data.