Kick-off for OpenGLAM in Switzerland

The following blog post was written by Beat Estermann (Bern University of Applied Sciences) following the OpenGLAM panel at OKCon 2013 in Geneva last week.

“GLAM” (“Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums”) is a collective term for memory institutions, i.e. museums, archives, libraries and similar organisations. OpenGLAM is about opening up to the knowledge society the memory institutions that preserve, process and pass on our cultural heritage to future generations, so that as many of their holdings as possible are made available to the general public for use and reuse. Promoting this opening process among memory institutions is the goal of the Open Knowledge Foundation’s OpenGLAM initiative.

OKCon2013- OpenGLAM Workshop 001
[Photo: Maarten Brinkerink, CC-by-sa]

OpenGLAM principles presented for the first time in Geneva

At OKCon in Geneva, the OpenGLAM principles were presented to a wider audience for the first time. The principles serve the movement as guidance for its activities. “Open” GLAM institutions are expected to:

Release information about their heritage objects (metadata) into the public domain using an appropriate licence […].
Keep digital reproductions of works whose copyright term has expired (public domain works) in the public domain by not asserting new legal claims.
When publishing data, make clear what kind of use and reuse of the data they consider desirable. […] When publishing data, use “open” file formats that are machine-readable.
Seize opportunities to create new forms of access to their target groups on the internet.

More on the OpenGLAM website: OpenGLAM principles

OKCon2013- OpenGLAM Workshop 007
[Photo: Maarten Brinkerink, CC-by-sa]

International exchange

The international OpenGLAM Working Group also used OKCon to foster exchange between OpenGLAM activists in the individual countries and to take the first steps towards setting up an OpenGLAM working group for Switzerland.

In addition to international GLAM representatives and representatives of the open data / open knowledge movement, several representatives of Swiss memory institutions also took part in the GLAM workshop. The participants identified the following points as the most important challenges to focus on in the near future:

  • broader involvement of the communities
  • development/application of legal and technical standards
  • cooperation with Wikipedia/Wikimedia
  • exchange of documents, argumentation and statistics
  • better recognition of the achievements of GLAM institutions that open up their holdings
  • realisation of “quick wins” to gain momentum

Further information on the workshop, including all presentations, can be found on the OpenGLAM blog.

Open GLAM CH presentation 20130918 from Beat Estermann

Next steps in Switzerland

For Switzerland, the opendata.ch association announced at OKCon the creation of an OpenGLAM working group. It is to include representatives of NGOs, GLAM institutions and research institutions and to advance the implementation of the OpenGLAM principles in Switzerland.

An OpenGLAM network is also to be launched. It will connect memory institutions that endorse the OpenGLAM principles, want to keep abreast of developments in the OpenGLAM field and can imagine working actively with the free knowledge / open data movement. For institutions that are already implementing concrete projects, the network will offer opportunities to share their experience with other institutions and to report on their innovation activities. The network is expected to be launched in 2014.