DM2E Community building (Lieke Ploeger – Open Knowledge) at Enabling humanities research in the Linked Open Web – DM2E final event (11 December 2014, Navacchio, Italy)

1. Community building in DM2E
Lieke Ploeger, Open Knowledge
co-funded by the European Union

2. Why?
Building an environment in which the DM2E tools can flourish and
create the value of scholarship and the wider public that they
promise
➢ promote the value of open data for cultural heritage and
humanities research
➢ a community that is broad, connected and sustainable after the
project ends
➢ a global cultural commons in which gatekeepers to cultural
heritage adopt open principles
*

3. Main activities
➔ Build up and support the OpenGLAM network of open culture
advocates for raising awareness of legal and technical best
practises around open cultural data
➔ Engage with developers, researchers and end users in the
humanities through a series of events and awards
➔ Strengthen and expand the online community around Europeana
(engage new stakeholders, enable content holders to contribute
new material)
➔ Provide extensive and varied documentation on project outputs
(video, user manuals, website, wiki)
*

4. OpenGLAM
Set up as one of the Working Groups in the Open Knowledge
portfolio in early 2012
➔ Gives the community significant autonomy as these Working
Groups are volunteer led
➔ Allows the community to benefit from the technical and
community support the Open Knowledge Foundation offers to all
groups (even beyond the lifetime of the project)
➔ Enables the community to share skills and
knowledge with other groups at international
open knowledge events like OKCon and OKFestival
*

5. *
Open Knowledge Working Groups

6. OpenGLAM: What we do
*
● Promote free and open access to
digital cultural heritage held by
Galleries, Libraries, Archives and
Museums (GLAMs)
● Build & support a community of
open culture evangelists
● Provide expertise to GLAMs on
open issues
● Provide information, resources and
tools for working with cultural
heritage content and data

7. OpenGLAM structure
*

8. Advisory Board
★ High-profile advocates for openness
within the cultural heritage sector
★ Provide guidance to the OpenGLAM
Working Group and give feedback on
key strategic issues
*

9. *
How can OpenGLAM help?
Network
● Mailinglist, twitter (#openglam)
● Local groups & ambassadors
● Working group and Advisory Board
Information
● Documentation
● OpenGLAM Principles
● Events
● News and blogs
Resources
● Open collections
● Culture labs

10. *

12. Curator's Choice
*

14. OpenGLAM principles
An OpenGLAM institution champions these principles:
1. Release digital information about the artefacts (metadata) into the public
domain using an appropriate legal tool such as the Creative Commons Zero
Waiver
2. Keep digital representations of works for which copyright has expired
(public domain) in the public domain by not adding new rights to them
3. When publishing data make an explicit and robust statement of your wishes
and expectations with respect to reuse and repurposing of the descriptions,
the whole data collection, and subsets of the collection
4. When publishing data use open file formats which are machine-readable
5. Opportunities to engage audiences in novel ways on the web should be
pursued
*

16. OpenGLAM local group: Switzerland
– Promote and facilitate the adoption of the OpenGLAM
principles in Switzerland
– Members include NGOs (Open Knowledge; Wikimedia; Creative
Commons), GLAMs, Research and educational institutions and
service providers
– Around 20-25 people actively participating in real-life
meetings and events
– Active task forces: Open Cultural Data Hackathon (Feb 2014),
Outreach to smaller institutions
*

17. OpenGLAM local group: Finland
• Finnish network of people working on opening up data and content
• Various events: seminars, workshops, meetups, hackathons
• Open Cultural Data Masterclass (spring 2014)
– Participants from different cultural and memory institutions
– Leading experts and practitioners as tutors
– 6 thematic one day sessions with various themes, e.g. copyrights, open
licenses, creative reuse and applications, demos and prototypes.
– Main objective: every organization would open up data and develop a small
demo or prototype using open cultural data.
DM2E Annual meeting, 12-13 June 2014, Bergen Norway

18. Continued growth
Metric 1st Feb 2013 1st Feb 2014 1st Dec 2014
Twitter handle 906 2,106 3,240
Public mailing list 250 604 720
Unique visitors to
site
19,101 60,408 95,267
*

19. OpenGLAM: the future
• Working Group going global: now 17 members, including New
Zealand, India and Brazil
• OpenGLAM local: 4 local groups running
Switzerland, Austria, Finland, Germany
• OpenGLAM benchmark survey
Measuring the state of advancement in open cultural data in
countries around the world (November 2014 - April 2015)
• New functionality and content for the Open Collections page
• Increased focus on case studies from different size institutions
*

20. DM2E: Active web presence
➔ Regular blogging through both www.dm2e.eu and www.
openglam.org - around 100 blogs a year combined
➔ Twitter @dm2europeana
➔ DM2E wiki
➔ Additional channels for sharing content: Slideshare and Vimeo
*

21. Events
18 DM2E events in 3 years: 500+ participants, 9 countries
➔ Demonstration and training with tools
◆ Pundit workshops
◆ The Web as Literature conference
➔ Best practices in open cultural data
◆ Open Data in Cultural Heritage workshops
◆ OpenGLAM legal workshop
◆ Putting Linked Library Data to Work
➔ Coding sprints and hackdays
◆ Open cultural hack
◆ Open Humanities hack
◆ Pundit hackday
*

22. May 2013: Pundit coding sprint

23. June 2013: The Web as Literature Conference

24. September 2013: Open Data in Cultural Heritage workshop

25. July 2014: Starting the OpenGLAM local group for Germany

26. Participation in conferences and events
★ 54 DM2E-focused presentations at international
conferences and events in the digital humanities and library
field
★ 14 journal articles on DM2E research
★ … and counting
★ Important DM2E mention in The Guardian (2012): http:
//www.theguardian.
com/news/datablog/2012/sep/12/europeana-cultural-heritage-
library-europe
*

27. Participation in conferences and events
◆ DM2E and its toolset represented at the Culture Hack Panel
of SXSW festival in Austin, Texas (together with Digital
Public Library of America and Europeana)
◆ LODLAM summit: Pundit wins LODLAM challenge!
*

28. Community documentation
DM2E Wiki
http://wiki.dm2e.eu
– Pundit Learning Environment
– Content provider mappings
– OmNom technical and user documentation
– Introduction to Open Cultural Data
– Full set of documentation on the DM2E model
– Screencasts and video tutorials on DM2E tools
– Multi-lingual, editable and annotatable
*

29. Community documentation

30. Engagement with researchers
• In contact with Digital Humanities departments e.g. Kings College
London, UCL Centre for Editing Lives and Letters
• Regular online contact with key Digital Humanities websites and
mailing lists e.g. Digital Humlab
• Active involvement in leading Digital Humanities networks and
projects e.g. DARIAH, LODLAM, Europeana Tech, MarineLives,
CENDARI
• Joint organisation of events
– Open Humanities Hack (with KCL)
– Pundit workshop held at DARIAH annual meeting

31. Contest Awards
Support innovative projects that use
open data, open content or open source
to further teaching or research
in the humanities

32. Contest Awards – round 1
Round 1: 2012-2013
Applications received = 50
Entries from over 30 different academic
institutions
*

33. Contest Awards – round 1
*
Winner 1: Bernhard Haslhofer of
the University of Vienna for
Maphub
Winner 2: Robyn Adams of
University College London for
Joined Up Early Modern
Diplomacy

34. Contest Awards – round 2
Second round: 2014
– Open track: SEA CHANGE,
Early Modern European Peace Treaties Online
– DM2E track: FinderApp WITTfind
*

35. Beyond DM2E...
OpenGLAM established as a sustainable, volunteer-led community
that will continue to push for openness in digital cultural heritage
➔ One of the most prominent Open Knowledge Working Groups
➔ Supported by a network of organisations working to open up cultural
content and data (including Europeana, the Digital Public Library of
America, Creative Commons and Wikimedia)
➔ Grew into a large, global, active volunteer-led community
*

36. The digital dream
A world in which our shared cultural heritage is
open to all regardless of their background
Open Knowledge Festival 2014.
Attribution: Gregor Fischer,
www.gfischer-photography.com/
A world in which people are no longer passive consumers
of cultural content created by an elite, but
contribute, participate, create and share