Category Archives: oa.glam

WorldFAIR Project (D13.2) Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations Report | Zenodo

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Abstract:  Deliverable 13.2 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13). Although the cultural heritage sector has only recently begun to think of traditional gallery, library, archival and museum (‘GLAM’) collections as data, long established practices guiding the management and sharing of information resources has aligned the domain well with the FAIR principles for research data, evidenced in complementary workflows and standards that support discovery, access, reuse, and persistence. As explored in the previous report by Work Package 13 for the WorldFAIR Project, D13.1 Practices and policies supporting cultural heritage image sharing platforms, memory institutions are in an important position to influence cross-domain data sharing practices and raise critical questions about why and how those practices are implemented.

Deliverable 13.2 aims to build on our understanding of what it means to support FAIR in the sharing of image data derived from GLAM collections. This report looks at previous efforts by the sector towards FAIR alignment and presents 5 recommendations designed to be implemented and tested at the DRI that are also broadly applicable to the work of the GLAMs. The recommendations are ultimately a roadmap for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to follow in improving repository services, as well as a call for continued dialogue around ‘what is FAIR?’ within the cultural heritage research data landscape.

WorldFAIR Project (D13.2) Cultural Heritage Image Sharing Recommendations Report –

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“Deliverable 13.2 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13). Although the cultural heritage sector has only recently begun to think of traditional gallery, library, archival and museum (‘GLAM’) collections as data, long established practices guiding the management and sharing of information resources has aligned the domain well with the FAIR principles for research data, evidenced in complementary workflows and standards that support discovery, access, reuse, and persistence. As explored in the previous report by Work Package 13 for the WorldFAIR Project, D13.1 Practices and policies supporting cultural heritage image sharing platforms, memory institutions are in an important position to influence cross-domain data sharing practices and raise critical questions about why and how those practices are implemented.

Deliverable 13.2 aims to build on our understanding of what it means to support FAIR in the sharing of image data derived from GLAM collections. This report looks at previous efforts by the sector towards FAIR alignment and presents 5 recommendations designed to be implemented and tested at the DRI that are also broadly applicable to the work of the GLAMs. The recommendations are ultimately a roadmap for the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) to follow in improving repository services, as well as a call for continued dialogue around ‘what is FAIR?’ within the cultural heritage research data landscape.

The report is available on Zenodo.”

Three Questions for Tracy Bergstrom – Ithaka S+R

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“Earlier this month, Tracy Bergstrom joined Ithaka S+R as a program manager focused on collections and infrastructure….

[From Tracy:] Libraries, archives, and museums exist for the enrichment of the communities they serve, and free and open access to knowledge is a critical component of establishing a more equitable society. While this underlying mission remains constant, the tools we need to administer this vision are evolving rapidly….”

SAOA Surpasses 1 Million Pages of Open Access Content | CRL

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“The South Asia Open Archives (SAOA) achieved a major milestone last month, surpassing one million pages in its online collection of free, open access digital content. 

For the past several years, members of the South Asia Open Archives initiative have been working collaboratively to build a robust collection of primary sources for researching, teaching, and learning about South Asia. Following its public launch in October 2019(link is external), SAOA has added hundreds of thousands of pages of newly digitized material from across the region. Now totaling over one-million pages of open-access primary source material, SAOA’s collection includes more than thirty-thousand items in twenty-seven different languages….”

NEH grant to transform UChicago’s creation and delivery of digital collections and research data – The University of Chicago Library News – The University of Chicago Library

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“The National Endowment for the Humanities is awarding the University of Chicago nearly $1 million to transform UChicago’s creation, stewardship, and delivery of digital collections and research data. Working together, the University of Chicago Library and Division of the Humanities will use the grant to build a new digital structure, UChicagoNode—the core of what will eventually be a network extending and enhancing the practice of digital research at UChicago and around the world. The University is committed to raising an additional $4 million to fulfill the vision for this project.

Treasure troves of more than 200 digital collections exist across the University, but they are found in a wide range of unconnected systems, including several hundred terabytes of digital content held at the Library. UChicagoNode will give researchers a single place to go to discover available digital collections through a unified, open access platform. It will provide a long-term home for content created as part of research and teaching at UChicago, contributed by partners from outside the University, and digitized by the Library. Future scholars will also benefit from UChicagoNode because it will provide an established infrastructure for a diverse range of digital collections and will break down barriers between traditionally siloed datasets. The collections will exist as datasets that can be used with machine analysis, natural language processing, spatial mapping, and other AI-based explorations….”

The Smithsonian Puts 4.5 Million High-Res Images Online and Into the Public Domain, Making Them Free to Use | Open Culture

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“More items are being added to Smithsonian Open Access all the time, each with its own story to tell — and all accessible not just to Americans, but internet users the world over. In that sense it feels a bit like the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893, better known as the World’s Columbian Exposition, with its mission of revealing America’s scientific, technological, and artistic genius to the whole of human civilization. You can see a great many photos and other artifacts of this landmark event at Smithsonian Open Access, or, if you prefer, you can click the “just browsing” link and behold all the historical, cultural, and formal variety available in the Smithsonian’s digital collections, where the spirit of Columbia lives on.”

A Checklist to Publish Collections as Data in GLAM Institutions

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Abstract:  Large-scale digitization in Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) created the conditions for providing access to collections as data. It opened new opportunities to explore, use and reuse digital collections. Strong proponents of collections as data are the Innovation Labs which provided numerous examples of publishing datasets under open licenses in order to reuse digital content in novel and creative ways. Within the current transition to the emerging data spaces, clouds for cultural heritage and open science, the need to identify practices which support more GLAM institutions to offer datasets becomes a priority, especially within the smaller and medium-sized institutions.

This paper answers the need to support GLAM institutions in facilitating the transition into publishing their digital content and to introduce collections as data services; this will also help their future efficient contribution to data spaces and cultural heritage clouds. It offers a checklist that can be used for both creating and evaluating digital collections suitable for computational use. The main contributions of this paper are i) a methodology for devising a checklist to create and assess digital collections for computational use; ii) a checklist to create and assess digital collections suitable for use with computational methods; iii) the assessment of the checklist against the practice of institutions innovating in the Collections as data field; and iv) the results obtained after the application and recommendations for the use of the checklist in GLAM institutions.

Europeana Translate Event – How machine translation & multilingual access impacts cultural heritage | Europeana Pro

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“This online event will present the Europeana Translate project outcomes, describe the methodology followed, the results obtained, and the impact of machine translation on improving user experience in the cultural heritage sector. Speakers will also reflect on machine translation and multilinguality in the cultural heritage domain and discuss this from a broader perspective with external insights.

You can expect presentations about the OCCAM (OCR, ClassificAtion & Machine Translation) project by Tom Vanallemeersch; information about the results of the EnrichEuropeana+ project by Sergiu Gordea and Henk Vanstappen, who will explore the automated translations of heritage data in the Bruges’ project Grenzeloos. This will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A where the speakers, joined by some of the Europeana Translate partners, will discuss the theme of machine translation and multilinguality further. Participants will be invited to share questions and perspective on automated translations in the cultural heritage domain and possible challenges for the future….”

A global approach for natural history museum collections | Science

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Abstract:  Over the past three centuries, people have collected objects and specimens and placed them in natural history museums throughout the world. Taken as a whole, this global collection is the physical basis for our understanding of the natural world and our place in it, an unparalleled source of information that is directly relevant to issues as diverse as wildlife conservation, climate change, pandemic preparedness, food security, invasive species, rare minerals, and the bioeconomy (1). Strategic coordination and use of the global collection has the potential to focus future collecting and guide decisions that are relevant to the future of humanity and biodiversity. To begin to map the aggregate holdings of the global collection, we describe here a simple and fast method to assess the contents of any natural history museum, and report results based on our assessment of 73 of the world’s largest natural history museums and herbaria from 28 countries.

From the body of the article:

“Natural history museums have generally operated independently, and no interoperable data structure exists to provide open access to their collective holdings. Because most natural history museum data are not digitally discoverable, the networks of data aggregators have not been able to access these “dark data” …”

 

Advancing Software Citation Implementation (Software Citation Workshop 2022)

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Abstract:  Software is foundationally important to scientific and social progress, however, traditional acknowledgment of the use of others’ work has not adapted in step with the rapid development and use of software in research.

This report outlines a series of collaborative discussions that brought together an international group of stakeholders and experts representing many communities, forms of labor, and expertise. Participants addressed specific challenges about software citation that have so far gone unresolved. The discussions took place in summer 2022 both online and in-person and involved a total of 51 participants.

The activities described in this paper were intended to identify and prioritize specific software citation problems, develop (potential) interventions, and lay out a series of mutually supporting approaches to address them. The outcomes of this report will be useful for the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums) community, repository managers and curators, research software developers, and publishers.

Call for Participation in a new Working Group on Image Sharing Practices in Cultural Heritage – CODATA, The Committee on Data for Science and Technology

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“Are you a professional working in the Cultural Heritage sector, interested in exploring how your institution or research area could improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of the digital images you collect and create? The DRI is opening a call for participation for a short-term Working Group, which will meet over a 5 month period from January to May 2023, to review and refine a set of recommendations for aligning practices across the Cultural Heritage sector with the FAIR principles for data sharing. The DRI is particularly keen to add members to the Working Group from currently underrepresented regions: South America, Australasia and Africa, though any interested parties should get in touch.

These recommendations are being produced as part of the WorldFAIR Project, a major global collaboration between partners from thirteen countries across Africa, Australasia, Europe, and North and South America.  WorldFAIR will advance the implementation of the FAIR data principles, in particular those for Interoperability, by developing a cross-domain interoperability framework and recommendations for FAIR assessment in a set of eleven disciplines or cross-disciplinary research areas. The DRI is leading the WorldFAIR case study for Cultural Heritage….”

WorldFAIR Project (D13.1) Cultural Heritage Mapping Report: Practices and policies supporting Cultural Heritage image sharing platforms | Zenodo

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Abstract:  Deliverable 13.1 for the WorldFAIR Project’s Cultural Heritage Work Package (WP13) outlines current practices guiding online digital image sharing by institutions charged with providing care and access to cultural memory, in order to identify how these practices may be adapted to promote and support the FAIR Principles for data sharing.

The report has been compiled by the Digital Repository of Ireland as a key information resource for developing the recommendations forthcoming in Deliverable 13.2. The DRI is Ireland’s national repository for the arts, humanities and social sciences. A Working Group of cultural heritage professionals has been invited to contribute feedback.

There are well-established standards and traditions driving the various approaches to image sharing in the sector, both local and global, which influence everything from the creation of digital image files, their intellectual organisation and level of description, to statements of rights governing use. Additionally, there are technological supports and infrastructures that have emerged to facilitate these practices which have significant investment and robust community support. These practices and technologies serve the existing communities of users well, primarily the needs of government, business and higher education, as well as the broader general public. Recommendations for adapting established collections delivery mechanisms to facilitate the use of cultural heritage images as research data would ideally not supersede or duplicate processes that also serve these other communities of users, and any solutions proposed in the context of the WorldFAIR Project must be made in respect of these wider contexts for image sharing.

New from WorldFAIR! Cultural Heritage Mapping Report: ‘Practices and policies supporting Cultural Heritage image sharing platforms’ – out now – CODATA, The Committee on Data for Science and Technology

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“New WorldFAIR Project Deliverable 13.1 ‘Cultural Heritage Mapping Report: Practices and Policies supporting Cultural Heritage image sharing platforms’ outlines current practices guiding online digital image sharing by institutions charged with providing care and access to cultural memory, in order to identify how these practices may be adapted to promote and support the FAIR principles for data sharing.

This report looks closely at the policies and best practices endorsed by a range of professional bodies and institutions representative of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (the ‘GLAMs’) which facilitate the acquisition and delivery, discovery, description, digitisation standards and preservation of digital image collections. The second half of the report further highlights the technical mechanisms for aggregating and exchanging images that have already produced a high degree of image interoperability in the sector with a survey of six national and international image sharing platforms: DigitalNZ, Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Europeana, Wikimedia Commons, Internet Archive and Flickr….”

CC Needs Assessment Report on Public Domain Tools in Cultural Heritage Sector Unveils Key Insights

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Today Creative Commons is proud to release our report on the Needs Assessment entitled Are the Creative Commons Public Domain Tools Fit-For-Purpose in the Cultural Heritage Sector?. From 1 January (Public Domain Day) to 15 February 2022, we ran a multilingual online survey using Google Forms to share a 50-question questionnaire in English, French and … Read More “CC Needs Assessment Report on Public Domain Tools in Cultural Heritage Sector Unveils Key Insights”

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