#OpenGLAM now: an insight from Larissa Borck
We interviewed Larissa Borck last year, as she was preparing the webinar series “Open GLAM now!” for the Swedish National Heritage Board. The webinar series focused on open cultural heritage data and how GLAM institutions can use digital means and media to open up to their audiences.
If you missed the live sessions, there are several way you can catch up with “Open GLAM now!”. Here’s a short introduction to the series. Larissa launched a website that includes all the sessions and compiles some of the major learnings and takeaways that happened on these webinars. Every session can also be found on this dedicated “Open GLAM now!” playlist, includes the individual presentations, whether in English or Swedish. Lariss also wrote about the making of the series here, including reflections on the medium and software she used.
We thought we’d send Larissa some questions to get her take on what the remaining challenges are, and how we “sit more people at the Open GLAM table”.
Now that the series is over, I’m sure you are quite relieved! What did you most enjoy about the series?
It was a ride, indeed. One of the aspects I liked the most in preparing and executing the series was actually getting in touch with people around the world and talking about Open GLAM topics. I was impressed by the generosity of the speakers sharing their knowledge and experiences with the audience and me. This is something I really appreciate with this network and perceive it as quite unique: how eager people are to help and support others on their open GLAM journey, on every step of the process.
What were your main takeaways?
My main takeaways centre around two points. The first one is about webinars as a format. I decided to go for this because I wanted an easy-to-access format that people around the world could take part in. In many ways, I was happy with the webinars as a format: the dissemination, the new people and institutions that joined the conversation and the possibility to include a wide range of perspectives without needing expensive travels. But there are other aspects I still reflect upon, such as sustainability. Right now, with the coronavirus pandemic, we see a lot of webinars being organised. And I wonder how sustainable are the conversations? Are they documented sufficiently so that people can find and use them? So this aspect of long-lasting impact of webinars is something I definitely take away as a need for reflection.
The second takeaway is of course the discussions that took place. I especially liked the conversations where we focused on the perspectives of the audiences and public. It’s important to discuss the needs of institutions and empower them on their journey. But I perceive our mission to serve the people with our collections. So when listening to Merete Sanderhoff talking about SMK’s projects to bring art to unexpected places for people to enjoy it in their daily lives, or Tim Sherratt reflecting about the means of hacking to explore questions of access to cultural heritage — that is something I personally loved perspective-wise.
How did the professionals watching receive the information? Did you receive any follow-up on institutions reconsidering their policies in light of what was being shared in the webinars?
First of all, I really liked the diversity of people signing up for the series: people from fifteen different countries around the world registered to take part! From the survey I sent to all participants later, I can see that people liked the blended design. Two thirds of them both took part in the live sessions and watched the recordings. Around the same amount of people took part in three to six of a total of nine sessions.
When asked about if their expectations about the series were met, “Open GLAM now!” got 8/10 points. I was especially glad to read about comments on the relevance of the series to the participating institutions. I got a lot of feedback that learning about specific examples was helpful and that presenters themselves offered deep and honest insights in how their institutions took the different steps — and that this also made people feel like getting to know the speakers. This is a valuable insight, as it will hopefully help to make those new participants part of the open GLAM network.
We also got institutions interested in sharing their data with us at the Swedish National Heritage Board and SOCH and others trying to apply open licences to their digital collections.
What topics do you think need to be covered most extensively in the future, or that received an unexpected interest? What are the plans to continue this professional development series?
Based on the results from the survey and the statistics from the sessions on Youtube, I think there are two different areas of interest in the sector. The first one is focusing on the data itself: How can we increase the quality of our collection data? How can we apply open licences to collections and how can we handle items where copyright status is not easy to determine? How can we work with linked open data and controlled vocabularies?
The second one is focusing on re-use and relationships with the audiences. How do we bring our digital collections to places where they become relevant to our target groups and the general public? How can we foster re-use of our data in ways we couldn’t even think of? And how can assure open access to the knowledge embedded in our collections?
As I’m going to leave to Swedish National Heritage Board in June after the Europeana Common Culture project ends (which this series has been part of), I won’t be able to continue the series — but I know that there are a lot of great ideas in the sector to work with capacity building in this area. Open GLAM is a movement based on the people that are fighting for open access in so many institutions around the world, so I look forward to seeing what we come up with next together!
