Grassroots & Ground Up Open GLAM: Building more sustainable networks, pathways and infrastructures to open GLAM participation

This project focuses on supporting open GLAM participation from the ground up and through a grassroots campaign among smaller collections holders and smaller data aggregators. It does so by expanding The GLAM-E Lab's direct representation model to support new partners on aspects of navigating rights clearance, digitisation, online publication and data ingestion, while also developing and testing standards for publication to improve the identification and verification of these newly-opened datasets by smaller aggregators. All findings from this work will be reduced to a toolkit to help others build their own grassroots campaigns and local networks that can support open GLAM participation beyond the life of the project.

Smaller collections holders are increasingly interested in building successful open access programmes that improve the visibility of their collections and explore the new business models that flow from greater public engagement. Popular platforms, like Wikimedia Commons, and data aggregators offer low-cost publication options that can improve visibility and engagement, but they also generate their own hurdles to open GLAM participation. Larger and well-resourced data aggregators with bespoke data models require higher levels expertise to prepare collections data for ingestion; meanwhile, smaller data aggregators that are a better fit for data published by less-well resourced organisations often view collections published to Wikimedia Commons as high-risk due to their inability to verify the rights status of the heritage datasets. The result is a huge missed opportunity for smaller organisations to publish collections as CC0 to Wikimedia Commons in a way that enables smaller aggregators and other actors to ingest data using Wikimedia's open API, thereby improving their findability, reusability and overall potential.

The GLAM-E Lab will meet these challenges by working directly with smaller collections holders and aggregators in the US and UK to improve the cross-border landscape and digital infrastructures of open GLAM. Project activities will initially focus on the organisation of a grassroots campaign among less well-resourced organisations in the Devon and South West Area to support the standardisation and publication of CC0 digital collections and data to Wikimedia Commons and the South West Collections Explorer. At the same time, The Lab will collaborate with smaller aggregators to develop standardised procedures and policies for identifying and onboarding the digital collections of these and other smaller organisations. By the end of the project, The Lab will publish all new findings and processes in an open access toolkit to support others in developing their own localised open GLAM campaigns and support networks. The project's wider impact will be to expand public access to digitised public domain collections while improving the overall diversity of openly-licensed collections and data available for reuse online.

The GLAM-E Lab brings together UK and US practitioners, academics, collections holders and data aggregators to model and test these new pathways, networks and infrastructures to more sustainable open GLAM participation. Through this new work, The Lab will explore and bridge the needs of smaller collections holders, platforms and data aggregators, leading to a diverse landscape of CC0 digital assets and data available for reuse by a diverse range of local and global audiences. The project will disseminate the research findings via the Lab's website, workshops, events and publications.