Keynote at Arts & Culture track, re;publica19 in Berlin, 7 May 2019. Description: Digital technologies and the Internet give museums fantastic opportunities to engage and empower audiences through open access to digital collections. So who is leading the way and what approaches are they using? Reflecting on his current work at Europeana, and fresh from co-leading a global survey of open access in the GLAM (Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum) sector, Douglas shares insights into the key trends and challenges in this space. “How can the digital era inspire museums to rethink their status as hubs of knowledge exchange, democratic dialogue, and genuine social experiences in an open society?” Merete Sanderhoff, Statens Museum for Kunst This question encapsulates the opportunities and challenges faced by museums today. In line with their everyday digital lives, people expect deeper and more personal forms of interaction with museums and their collections; participation, not passivity. For cultural heritage organisations, enabling open access to digitised public domain works should be seen as an important driver of democratisation and greater societal relevance. Embracing this vision requires cultural institutions to remodel themselves from knowledge arbiters to welcoming facilitators; new attitudes, policies and practices are needed. What is the big picture of open access in the GLAM sector today? Where is innovation happening and who is driving it? What challenges does open access pose to museums and how might these be overcome? This session aims to answer these questions and provide a broad perspective on the field. It draws on keynote speaker Douglas McCarthy’s experiences working internationally in museums, archives, art collections – and now Europeana – for the past twenty years. It also includes fresh insights from the global survey of Open GLAM policy and practice that Douglas co-leads with Dr. Andrea Wallace, Lecturer of Law at the University of Exeter.

1. Open Access for an Open
Society – GLAM Insights
re;publica19, 7 May 2019
Douglas McCarthy, Europeana Foundation. CC BY
Brandenburger Thor in Berlijn (detail)
Unknown photographer, 1890-1910
Rijksmuseum
Public Domain Mark

2. Galleries
Libraries
Archives
Museums

3. “The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is
not too sure that it is right… it seeks to
understand the minds of other men and
women.”
Learned Hand (1872-1961)

4. My goals today
• Introduce you to Europeana
• Present open data in the GLAM context
• Highlight Open GLAM innovation & communities
Inspire new ideas and conversations
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

5. United Kingdom
Wellcome Collection, CC BY
Snell, A practical guide
to the examination
What is
Europeana?

6. • Europeana is an open data platform with many services
• We publish more than 50 million digital objects from 3500+ galleries,
libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs) across Europe
• We add value to GLAMs by aggregating & promoting their collections
• Key digital products: Europeana Collections and a suite of APIs
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

7. ‘We transform the world with culture. We want to
build on Europe’s rich heritage and make it easier
for people to use, whether for work, for learning
or just for fun.’
Kursus Fräulein Stein bei Möller
Heinrich Hamann, 1905-09
Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg
CC0

8. • Established 2008
• Core Service governed by the European Commission & Member States
• Almost 60 staff; 17 different nationalities; 50%-50% male/female
• Head office: Royal Library of the Netherlands, The Hague
• Europeana Network Association - a community of 2000+ heritage experts
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

9. Europeana AGM 2018 Austria, Europeana Foundation, CC BY-SA
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA

10. Title here
CC BY-SA
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for a Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

11. Trustworthy cultural heritage
● Authentic catalogue information from source
● Clear attribution to the creator/rights holder
● Direct link to the object on data provider’s website
● Visible licence or rights statement

12. Title here
CC BY-SA
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA
Thematic collections

13. Why running a Cross Functional Team?
Women’s History Month
18 January - 31 March 2019

14. Women’s History Month: editorial
● We told the stories of 21 women: 16 real and 5 fictional
● The stories spanned 19 different countries
● 4 centuries of women's history
● We told these stories with cultural heritage content from 80
institutions from over 20 countries across the world

15. Pioneers exhibition

16. ● 7 partner institutions contributed guest blogs
● 27,444 visits to the Women’s History Month blog posts
● 138% traffic boost to Europeana Collections blog in March
Women’s History Month: blogs

17. Women’s History Month: galleries
● Helene Schjerfbeck - 2,064
● Silhouettes: a century of female fashion - 1,185
● Corsets - 610
● Elsa Schiaparelli - 252
● Women in World War I - 194

18. Women in Culture and Tech

19. Facebook
● 53 Facebook posts
○ 7,182,245 impressions
○ 117,771 engaged users

20. Twitter
● 105 tweets
○ 472,000 impressions
○ 4,450 engaged users
○ 727 mentions

21. Instagram
● Successful launch of our Instagram account
● 745 followers
● Avg. engagement over 11%
Best performing posts per engagement rate

22. Instagram
● Instagram Stories takeover of National Museum of Women in the Arts
○ Featuring #5WomenArtists from cultural institutions across Europe
○ Pledge to support women in arts

23. Europeana Colouring Book
● 4th edition
● Theme - Women in History
● Promoted during #ColorOurCollection Campaign (4-7/02)
and the Women’s Day event at Atria (8/03)

24. DailyArt partnership
● 4 paintings in DailyArt App (700,000 users)
● 4 guest articles in DailyArt Magazine
Traffic peaks on Pioneers Sundays (3, 10, 17, 24 March) when the paintings were shared in the app, linking to the exhibition.

25. Join the Europeana Network Association

26. GIF
IT
UP

27. Plan von Hamburg und Altona, c. 1910
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Bremen
Public Domain Mark
Open data
in GLAM
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

28. ‘Open means anyone can freely access,
use, modify, and share for any purpose.’
The Open Definition
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

29. Legal tools for open data
● Public Domain Mark
● CC0
● CC BY
● CC BY-SA
● No Known Copyright
(+ national variants)
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

30. Structured Open Data on the Web
● Google
● Google Images
● Knowledge Graph
● Wikipedia
● Wikidata
● Siri
● Alexa...
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

31. Structured Open Data on the Web

32. Structured Open Data on the Web
‘Open linked data enables ubiquitous presence as
machines increasingly filter our views — via preferred
search engines, the knowledge graph, or Siri —
particularly of content found in Wikidata… publication of
collections as open data facilitate an increase in views,
enriched data, automatic translation, and magnified
visibility.’
Villaespesa and Navarrete, 2019 Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA
Open Access for an Open Society – GLAM Insights
CC BY-SA

33. Structured Open Data on the Web
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA

34. Structured Open Data on the Web
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA

35. ‘Wikidata in GLAMs, How and why’
Jason Evans, National Library of Wales
Jason Evans at EuropeanaTech 2018
Image: Sebastiaan ter Burg, CC BY

36. ‘Wikidata in GLAMs, How and why’

37. ‘Wikidata in GLAMs, How and why’

38. Powering citizen science
Transfer des Wissens – From Hamburg to the World
CC BY-SA

39. “Where Are The Edit and
Upload Buttons?”

40. Ethical matters in Open GLAM

42. #OpenGLAM

43. The Open GLAM survey examines how GLAMs make
open access data – whether digital objects, metadata or
text – available for re-use.
● Started in March 2018
● Informal & crowdsourced initiative
● Ongoing and growing:
30 GLAMs in March 2018
600+ GLAMs today Dr. Andrea Wallace
@AndeeWallace
Douglas McCarthy
@CultureDoug

45. Medium Series
by Douglas McCarthy
Part 1: Uncovering the global picture of Open GLAM
https://medium.com/@CultureDoug/uncovering-the-
global-picture-of-open-glam-af364aadeeee
Part 2: Licensing policy and practice in Open GLAM
https://medium.com/@CultureDoug/licensing-policy-
and-practice-in-open-glam-49c867b49de8
Part 3: Open Access Scope in Open GLAM
https://medium.com/@CultureDoug/open-access-scope-
in-open-glam-70461bec2bca

46. “We’re doing the same thing, for the
same reason, for the same people,
often in the same medium.
Let’s do it together.”
Liam Wyatt, Europeana GLAMwiki Coordinator
To conclude

47. Thank you.
Let’s keep in touch!
● pro.europeana.eu/person/douglas-mccarthy
● @CultureDoug
● linkedin.com/in/douglaskmccarthy
Pózoló kisfiú, 1970
Bauer Sándor
Fortepan
CC BY-SA
CC BY-SA