Inputs OpenGLAM workshop at OKCon 2013

Berner Fachhochschule | Haute école spécialisée bernoise | Bern University of Applied Sciences
Are GLAMs Ready for Open Data and Crowdsourcing?
Results of a pilot survey and their implications for the promotion of OpenGLAM
in Switzerland
Beat Estermann, 16 September 2013 – OKCon, Geneva
▶ Bern University of Applied Sciences, E-Government Institute
Musée de l'Ariana (Genève), Wikimedia Commons, Gfuerst, CC-by-sa
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

▶ Pilot study among Swiss GLAMS: summary of results
▶ Implications for the promotion of OpenGLAM in Switzerland – theses
▶ OpenGLAM CH – proposed institutional setup
Contents

Pilot Study among Swiss GLAMs
Summary of Results

Where do Swiss GLAMs stand with regard to…
4
…Digitization?
…Exchange of metadata in multilateral cooperation?
…Open Data?
…Crowdsourcing?
…Linked Open Data?
What are the perceived risks and opportunities? (drivers vs. hindering factors)
What are the expected benefits? Who are the beneficiaries?
Awareness Evaluation AdoptionTrialInterest
Innovation Diffusion Model,
Everett Rogers, 1962

▶ GLAMs in Switzerland:
• ca. 600-700 independent GLAMs of national or regional significance
• ca. 1000 independent GLAMs organized in three umbrella organizations
▶ Our sample: memory institutions of national significance in the German-
speaking part of Switzerland
• 197 organisations contacted (233 e-mail addresses)
• 72 questionnaires completed (34% of the contacted organisations)
▶ Caveats:
• The sample is rather small (results are not very precise with regard to the
entire Swiss GLAM population, large confidence intervals apply)
• Archives are over-represented in the sample (higher response rate);
museums and «other institutions» are under-represented; libraries are about
average.
Pilot Study among Swiss GLAMs

Innovation Diffusion among Swiss GLAMs:
The Overall Picture
A critical mass has been reached.
How about the laggards?
Will we see a higher rate of adoption for
Open Data than for Crowdsourcing?
Some institutions are starting to think about
Linked Data…

▶ Between 1% and 7% of responding GLAMs make scans/photographs of their
heritage objects «freely» available on the Internet.
▶ Over half of them make them available on the Internet, but with restrictions.
40% don’t make them available at all.
▶ Over 50% of the GLAMs which make their heritage objects available on the
Internet do not understand that you cannot make works available for
Wikipedia and simultaneously prevent their modification and/or their
commercial use!
Open Data / Open Content Readiness

▶ Main target groups:
• Research and education
• Private individuals
• Cultural institutions
▶ Main opportunities:
• Better visibility and accessibility of holdings
• Better visibility of the institutions
• Better networking among GLAMs.
▶ Main risks:
• Extra time effort and expenses
(however: loss of revenue is hardly seen as a risk)
• Loss of control: copyright, data protection, secrecy infringements
Open Data:
Target Groups, Opportunities vs. Risks

▶ For over 80% of responding GLAMs the opportunities outweigh the risks of
Open Data.
▶ Over 50% think Open Data is an important issue; almost all of these believe
that the opportunities outweigh the risks.
Desirability and Importance of Open Data
0%
1%
6% 6%
7%
36%
25%
11%
6%
3%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
-10 to -
8
-8 to -6 -6 to -4 -4 to -2 -2 to 0 0 to 2 2 to 4 4 to 6 6 to 8 8 to 10
Desirability of Open Data (in % of institutions, N=71)
1%
8% 7%
3%
21%
31%
8% 14%
6%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
very important important neither, nor unimportant no answer
Importance / Desirability of Open Data
(in % of institutions; N=71)
risks prevail opportunities prevail

▶ Most GLAMs wouldn’t readily agree to «freely» license their content – even in the
absence of third party rights: they would like to prevent the commercial use at no
charge as well as the modification of works. Education, Research, and a non-profit
purpose are good arguments in favour of free licensing.
Open Data / “Free” Licensing of Content
59%
76%
60%
29%
7%
69%
40%
21%
19%
23%
26%
9%
20%
34%
1%
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
For private use For education
and research
For charitable
projects
For charitable
projects, such
as
Wikipedia, which
also permit
commercial use
For users who
are intending to
commercially
exploit them
Only if the name
of the institution
remains
attached to the
data
Only if the work
will be re-used
in unmodified
form
Conditions under which they would make memory objects freely accessible on the Internet
(in % der Institutionen; N=70)
"is partly the case"
"is the case"

▶ 11% of responding GLAMs have staff members who contribute to Wikipedia
as part of their professional activity.
▶ 10% of responding GLAMs say that online volunteering plays partly an
important role for them.
▶ Interestingly, no correlation was found between the two variables.
Crowdsourcing Readiness

▶ Main areas of application:
• Classification tasks / completion of metadata
• Ca. 50% of GLAMs perceive a need to improve their metadata.
• Main areas for improvement: completeness, availability, digitziation
• Transcription and correction tasks
▶ Main drawbacks:
• Considerable time / effort needed for preparation and follow-up
• No guarantee concerning long-term data maintenance
• Unforeseeable results
• Difficulties in estimating the time-effort
• Low level of planning security
Crowdsourcing: Opportunities vs. Risks

▶ For over 90% of the responding GLAMs the risks of Crowdsourcing are at least as
great as the opportunities. For half of them the risks clearly prevail.
▶ Among GLAMs which think that Crowdsourcing is an important issue, the risk
perception is equally high.
▶ Crowdsourcing is seen as almost as important as Open Data!
Desirability and Importance of Crowdsourcing
4%
15%
19%
11%
43%
3% 3% 1%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
40%
45%
-10 to -
8
-8 to -6 -6 to -4 -4 to -2 -2 to 0 0 to 2 2 to 4 4 to 6 6 to 8 8 to 10
Desirability of Crowdsourcing (in % of institutions; N=69)
10%
25%
14%
29%
16%
3%
1%
1%
0%
5%
10%
15%
20%
25%
30%
35%
very
important
important neither, nor unimportant no answer
Importance / Desirability of Crowdsourcing
(in % of institutions; N=69)
risks prevail opportunities prevail

Implications for the Promotion of
OpenGLAM in Switzerland
Theses

▶ In the short term and on a large scale, it is worthwhile to pursue approaches
that do not require a high level of mutual engagement between GLAMs
and the community
• simply releasing content is easier than engaging in more complex
cooperation!)
• some level of standardization (metadata, content quality, APIs) may be
needed to keep transaction costs low.
▶ GLAMs are most likely to adopt Open Data / Open Content policies, …
• if it’s for education and research
• if it’s for a non-profit cause
• if it’s useful (well documenting the use is important!)
Wikipedia/Wikimedia as well as research and educational institutions
are attractive partners.
Short-term strategy

▶ Information campaigns at the address of GLAMs should focus on:
• information about the “free” licensing requirement for Wikipedia and Open
Data
• positive accounts of how other institutions handle the relative loss of
control
• demonstrating how the provenance of the data / content is documented
• examples of how a useful content contribution can be made without much
extra effort (often, removing the non-commercial claim in copyright
licenses or clearly declaring public domain works as such would already
be of great help!)
Role models and example cases among their peer group could be
instrumental to get some of these messages across!
Short-term information campaigns

▶ Real cooperation is costly. It is important to demonstrate and document its
usefulness and to foster learning processes that benefit the entire GLAM
sector. For that we need pilot cooperation projects!
▶ Communication efforts with regard to cooperation between the Free
Knowledge / Open Data / Open Content movement and GLAMs should focus
on:
• Putting collections and cross-organizational themes at the center of
attention (and not the institutions)
• Telling GLAMs how released contents have been used and what
types of content would be particularly useful
• Telling stories of mutually beneficial relationships between GLAMs
and the communities
Cooperation / communication in the longer-term

▶ We should examine how digitization efforts of GLAMs that haven't been
digitizing their heritage objects yet can be supported – in exchange for “free”
licensing of content.
▶ We should examine to what extent crowdsourcing approaches can be used
to respond to GLAMs' needs and expectations in terms of metadata
improvement and correction/transcription tasks.
▶ Metadata is important for GLAMs: The potential of Wikidata with regard to
GLAM metadata should be better explored.
Digitization and metadata improvement

OpenGLAM CH
Proposed Institutional Setup

▶ Mission: Promote and facilitate the adoption of the OpenGLAM principles in
Switzerland
▶ Institutional attachment: working group of the “opendata.ch” association;
international linkage with the OpenGLAM initiative of the Open Knowledge
Foundation
▶ With the participation of Wikimedia CH and Digitale Allmend / Creative
Commons Switzerland
▶ Swiss GLAMs as well as research and educational institutions are invited to
join
▶ Proposed timeline:
▶ October/November 2013: official constitution
▶ By the end of 2013: development of an activity plan for 2014
Swiss OpenGLAM Working Group

▶ Network of organizations/institutions that endorse the OpenGLAM principles
▶ Basic level of participation:
• express adhesion / support
• stay informed
• signal readiness for active cooperation with the Free Knowledge / Open
Data / Open Content movement
▶ Advanced level of participation:
• engage in pilot projects (cooperation projects / Open Data projects)
• engage in mutual learning processes
(documentation, evaluation, hackathons, conferences)
• be recognized as an innovator in the area of OpenGLAM
▶ Types of organizations asked to join the network:
• GLAMs, NGOs, research institutions
• educational institutions, service providers, funding institutions
Swiss OpenGLAM Network

▶ Full study report:
• English: http://tinyurl.com/SwissGLAMsurvey
• Deutsch: http://tinyurl.com/GLAMStudie
▶ Contact details:
• Beat Estermann
E-mail: beat.estermann@bfh.ch
Phone: +41 31 848 34 38
▶ Affiliations:
• Research Associate, E-Government Institute, Bern University of Applied Sciences
Member of opendata.ch (Swiss Chapter of the Open Knowledge Foundation)
Member of Digitale Allmend (Swiss Chapter of CreativeCommons)
Member of Wikimedia CH
Thank you for your attention!

Inputs OpenGLAM workshop at OKCon 2013

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