GLAM School/Topics/Deepening engagement

One of the hypotheses is that there should be a path of deepening engagement with the open ecosystem that the GLAM practitioners take, to become more autonomous in contributing to the Wikimedia projects and the open ecosystem in general.

How do you see this path for different groups of contributors: GLAM-Wiki volunteers, Wikimedia volunteers in general, OpenGLAM advocates, technically oriented contributors, GLAM professionals in general, or those with technical skills, technology providers, creative professionals, researchers in humanities, cultural activists in underresourced communities?

Furthermore, the personal path of a volunteer often results in a deep understanding of the issues at stake. How could more professional opportunities be opened for the experienced wikimedians?

Taking the first steps

Creating a permanent relationship between a GLAM institution and the representatives of the open ecosystem is a long and fragile trajectory.

Exposure to the open ecosystem

Wikimedia chapters initiate collaborations with memory institutions in a variety of ways.

Wikimedia Česká republika does outreach at conferences and events to find new partners. It's important to see the two sides of the advocacy: The advocates wish to talk about benefits for free knowledge, but GLAMs need to hear about the benefits for the cultural heritage sector to be more positive.

Wikimedia Serbia sends the GLAM a detailed email of who they are, what they do, the link to their website and project pages on Wikipedia when they approach the GLAM for the first time. They also cite an example of a similar cultural institution with which they have established cooperation and have had great results. By citing examples, they increase the chance of a positive outcome because institutions often tend to follow an already tried example, innovators and those who want to take the first step are rare.

When content partnerships are based on volunteer work, it sets clear boundaries to what can be agreed upon, and whether additional financial support is needed from either party.

Explaining open knowledge and open licenses

This is the foundation and the first step in the encounters with the memory institutions. The GLAM advocates need to justify releasing the cultural heritage materials openly and advice in using the open licenses. It would be important to strengthen the expertise and confidence of the GLAM advocates in explaining open knowledge and open licenses. Insufficient or incorrect information may result in lack of trust towards the open ecosystem and contributing to it.

GLAMs are hard to convince, they have strong opinions and varying conditions that need to be adapted to. Many aspects need to be explained, such as open licensing and the linked data of Wikidata.

The concept of ownership of the cultural heritage needs to be constantly explained and open access defended. Wikimedians in Serbia note that institutions further away from the capital are more possessive of their collections. Several museums are considering rolling back their open access policies in favor of monetizing the collection in web3. See more discussion about this in the section Emerging issues.

The boundaries of sharing in Wikimedia projects need to be explained. Sometimes the GLAMs may have unrealistic ideas of what is possible or sensible. These topics include limitations regarding copyright, other rights, notability, editability, commercial reuse or the scope of an upload to mention some important ones.

Showing the benefit of open for GLAMs

Wikimedia Belgium has several strategies to prepare the collaboration with the GLAM institutions. They review the copyright statement of the collection and choose a compatible Creative Commons license to use for the upload to Wikidata (CC0), Wikimedia Commons (CC BY or CC BY-SA) and Wikipedia (CC BY-SA). They make the museum aware of the advantages of using LoD. They convince the museum that volunteers can help the museum to describe their collections. They also create a data model for the collection (Work in progress with the Plantentuin museum Meise https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meise_Botanic_Garden)

We try to show that by working with us the organization can increase their visibility. Sharing their content is in line with their mission and we can help.

Using FOMO to get partners to work together.

Working from the needs of the GLAMs

The most successful collaborations are built on the activities of the GLAM institutions. When a focused import is linked with activities in the GLAM, they may display their content and activities to a wider audience and in this way attract potential visitors. This is an opportunity to educate the GLAM employees about digitization, its importance, Wiki projects, editing, copyright and how our cooperation can contribute to increasing their visibility.

Large organizations often don’t see the need for working with Wikimedia, and smaller ones don’t have the resources.

GLAMs have strong opinions about practices and processes, and it causes more time spent on adapting practices for individual institutions. Interviews/discussions with GLAMs would be useful to see what their needs are and what we can offer to them.

Wikimedia Australia has produced a report on their GLAM and data partnerships that has many useful mappings for organizing the work with GLAMs.

See the section about impact for more detailed information about this.

Overcoming capacity issues in GLAMs

There could be practices in place for museums and organizations in underserved circumstances for digitization. Some chapters work on actual digitization of cultural heritage objects. This helps fast forward making them available openly online.

Wikimedia Serbia funds Wikimedians-in-Residence instead of expecting the GLAM to pay, in order to not compete for the limited resources of the institution. There has been resistance in the past from the WMF to “yet another WiR” and suggestions organisations should be funding this themselves, but most orgs have no idea of the value of a WiR and are reluctant to gamble money on one.

Wikimedia Belgium would like to be able to offer resources to small partners who cannot fund that themselves.

GLAMs need to have a level of preparedness to be able to collaborate in GLAM. An enthusiastic marketing person who will act as an intermediary to unlock photo collections and convince professional photographers to sign over copyright – they will already have a relationship with people in the area being covered. Plus general support from the very top of an institution for initiatives in this area, as I’ve found people at lower levels can be enthusiastic, but no progress will happen unless those with control over budgets and priorities agree.

Different kinds of partners in GLAM

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums are inscribed in the acronym GLAM. In addition, many more institutions, such as universities and research institutions can also be seen to be part of GLAMs. There is a fallacy of limiting the interest in cultural heritage to established institutions. GLAM activities should be seen to include also cultural heritage that is not governed by the grand institutions. There are many organized collections outside institutions, and many types of poorly documented and preserved heritage that represent the content gaps the Wikimedia movement is trying to address.

When working with libraries it would be less on content and more with teaching people to use and edit Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects.

Importing content is mainly focused on public domain materials and working with contemporary art partners, for example, is more limited.

Continued engagement with the open ecosystem

It can be hard for a Wikimedia chapter to maintain a relationship with GLAMs when there are no ongoing collaborations. Wikimedia Serbia emphasizes the importance of good communications, how they stay in contact while working together, and follow up after a collaboration ends

Wikimedia Serbia has developed practices where they follow important events to be able to organize a thematic event around the topic. With mutual consultations and advice with GLAMs, they point out to each other the fields that could be better covered.

It is important to connect institutions with one another about the possibilities the open platforms offer.

Wikimedia Chile connects with their partners on a continuous basis, inviting them to talks or particular events to spark a collaboration, such as contests, interviews for a podcast etc.

Mapping the pathways of engagement

Sandra Fauconnier has outlined the basic workflow of a partnership.

Wikimedia Australia has a framework in place for Wikidata and GLAM partnerships.

Building networks

Peer support networks in GLAM

Better coordination between chapters/user groups/communities to help each other and plan for future and current partnerships. Better cooperation with the Commons community for discussions in license questions or deletion discussions. Help in sorting out discussions with GLAMs when they fear WMID or others only want to monetize collections as Commons allow for that. Participation in OpenGLAM and other conferences help in reaching out.

Partners need to be open to both working and also for the other parts of what the movement does. Full commitment from partners supporting activities. Setting up a network within the movement for partnerships. Both regional and wider areas need to be connected. Building a family for support when problems arise or when questions need to be sorted out. The community is both volunteers and staff, and we should network and build on that. Work with forming a network for GLAM specialists (who are not lawyers).

New young UG, quiet separated from the rest of the movement. Hard to find a place in both global and regional groups. More global movement partnerships would help to find new affiliates to work with. Wiki Science competition is a new collaboration. 24h WikiWomeninRed is a new approach to get work going over a longer time and with more affiliates. Working more remotely has helped in making the world smaller and to open up for new projects across affiliates and organizations.

Working closely with other African chapters, planning a pre-wikimania conference, doing a joint grant application.

Support in training from experienced chapters within the movement in doing uploads and other technical stuff would be helpful. Learning how to run all parts of projects.

Teaming up with other organizations supporting open knowledge

Wikimedia Serbia states that they would welcome a broader collaboration of likeminded NGOs with aligned mission to be able to scale up the impact of their digitization work. WMTW have incorporated CC TW and are promoting CC licenses. Wikimedia Belgium works closely with Meemoo, a Flemish governmental institution that works on public domain, digitizing analog collections, register and link collection inventories with Wikidata and other LoD databases. LIASA (Library and Information Association of South Africa). Strong network with the academic libraries. Working with copyright reform together. Doing events and also #1lib1ref. The alliance for copyright ?, advocacy partnership. Working with Lingua Libre and WMFR.

Kinds of partnerships

Regional focus with different actors

Wikimedia Chile picked up a practice to focus on certain regions. Building a pilot project to do more, have an agenda with several events and organizations, give training to institutions and work with volunteers, build a local network. Get much impact to have participants see that a lot is happening and that they can cheer each other on.

Thematic

More thematic partners than long term partners.

Focus on the editor base

Building partnerships for expanding the editor base rather than content creation. Building for the long term, To expand and get more content about South Africa the community need to grow. Projects have to be “fun” for volunteers to work with them rather than running projects for the goals. Passion driven, and might look random, but based on what areas volunteers are interested in. Some projects have agreements, but running by passion tends to make things happen without written agreements. Some projects gets funding by the partners, but most not. Usually not running projects where a room is “filled by people”.

External funding, strategic support

Having discussions with Goethe- institute to reorganize and reshape the process. Working with a science hub (name?), Goethe institute and (Seedspace?). Also working with the Swedish embassy around WikiGap. Working with the Swedish embassy with WikiGap. Using that to explain about the project and setting up a partnership.

Ways of getting more involved

Learning basic skills about contributing

Wikimedia Belgium states that it would be ideal if partners could do more work themselves, and the chapter would only provide training, coaching and referral to other organisations and institutions. Ideally, the different museums could use and share the same techniques and data models for collections and support each other. That would allow the chapter to do more advocacy and less hands-on activities.

Wikimedia Chile focuses on training practitioners in the open culture world.

GLAM ambassadors in institutions

The role of committed individuals in organization is often crucial for successful partnerships.

Some partnerships build on having a strong champion who run the partnership.

Advocating open access to cultural heritage

Wikimedia Chile follows actively the ongoing changing of the constitution, as it is an opportunity of being part of something bigger and new. Trying not to take sides, but bring new perspectives.

Academic involvement

Wikimedia Taiwan reports that academic case studies would be beneficial to help in lifting the value of collaborations. Some collaborations need to be restarted with the help of academic papers and well written case studies. Some GLAMs do not consider Wikipedia a good partner, and are holding back content and collections. There are already a lot of community contributions and GLAM papers, but still lacking academic papers on the value of content partnerships.

Stories of deepening engagement

We have asked for journey stories about people becoming involved in GLAM / open access to cultural heritage. Below are stories, either real or imaginary, that have been collected that way.

The first thing I’ll say is interest. You have to be interested in GLAM and to see the value in that is undocumented and that is missing. You also have to have a huge vision. I remember when we started and I joined Hack4OpenGLAM and I shared my ideas with Isaac. He saw it in a much bigger space than I in some instances. So I believe the first thing is you have to be interested. Then when you are interested, you have to check the GLAM practices in your immediate environment, and see if there's a gap to fill out with your contributions. In our own instance, we saw that there was practically no strategy for GLAM, and it is a good idea to start something fresh, something with the youth, something that a lot of young Nigerians might be interested in, that they can attach themselves to. So I believe it is about interest. It is about seeing the missing gap and having a vision that can spread for 10 to 15 years. – Alaafiabami Oladipupo, Free Knowledge Africa

I knew little about GLAM in the beginning when Isaac introduced me to Free Knowledge Africa, and just as Alaafiabami explained, you have to have interest, you have to understand the knowledge gaps that exist in the communities, and how a lot of resources are out there and people don’t know about them, and to understand that people can have access to them and here GLAM comes in. So when you have interest and you find this gap, look for like minded people to come together, and look for how you are going to fill this gap with the resources you have. This is how I joined and it has been an amazing experience so far. – Olubusola Afolabi, Free Knowledge Africa

So for me, I would say it's also a matter of interest, I picked this interest because of the lack of visibility for African cultural works and the difficulty in accessing them digitally. So that was the point from which I came from when I started becoming active in Creative Commons and GLAM-Wiki. So as I said, there are a lot of big gaps in Nigeria. At the same time I started talking to Alaafia about becoming an Open GLAM ambassador for Sub-Saharan Africa for Hack4OpenGLAM, and he also got more interested. Based on these ideas, and as Busola is a professional librarian, we started exchanging ideas of how we can build something in this direction with people like Douglas McCarthy to advise us, and how we can do these things. We started from the idea of the public domain first because it's a bit difficult to penetrate the system here so we decided to start from something that was already legally open already and make it digital. – Isaac Oloruntimilehin, Free Knowledge Africa