User:Susannaanas/TMIG/2022-04

AvoinGLAM is a group in Finland that contributes to the global Open GLAM and GLAM-Wiki community. We advocate for open access to cultural heritage and run projects in Finland as well as globally. We have been promoting our backronym for GLAM: Instead of focusing only on institutions with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums, we wish to include the wealth of human and more-than-human cultural heritage by calling it Global Languages, Art & Memory.

Open Access vs NFT

Blog post

In April AvoinGLAM responded to the blog post issued by the Director General of the Finnish National Gallery. In this blog post he argued that the open access policy at the Finnish National Gallery should be replaced by restrictive custom licensing. Our response is based on a collection of reactions of the Open GLAM and GLAM-Wiki proponents in discussions about the blog post. Read AvoinGLAM's response including commentary by the Director General Mr. Kimmo Levä (English, Finnish), and the collection of social media responses on our blog.

Webinar

Parallel to the response, we arranged a discussion event focusing on Open Access to cultural heritage, monetization, and NFT. The idea of monetizing museum collections by trading on the crypto platforms is a new and surprising idea for the cultural heritage sector. This event allowed us to understand what it is about and to voice concerns that the advocates for open access to cultural heritage have brought up. Read the page that contains the video recording of the discussion and a collections of recommended readings about the topic (English, Finnish).

GLAM School invites participants

In the GLAM School project we are charting out practices that help GLAM professionals, GLAM-Wiki volunteers, Open GLAM advocates and others to be more empowered to contribute to Wikimedia and other open projects. We are conducting surveys, chats, and interviews across organizations and networks to learn about the needs as well as existing resources and practices.

We are inviting you to share your knowledge about learning to GLAM!

On the GLAM School page, you can book an interview or alternatively fill in the survey in Google Forms or on-wiki. You don't have to share all your thoughts at once. Instead, you can add to your answers until the end of the year. You can also translate the questions to your language. That way the survey can be spread in your local context more easily.

The responses are summarised into recommendations but we also plan not to waste time if there's something that could be done immediately.

AvoinGLAM partners with the National Library in making available services in Northern Saami

The National Library of Finland received funding from Alfred Kordelin Foundation to improve the availability of Sámi languages and cultural materials on their three services: Finna – the Finnish aggregator of GLAM content will be serving content with a Northern Saami interface, Finto – the Finnish Upper Ontology will be made available in Northern Saami, and Kotoistus – the Nothern Saami locales will be updated in the CLDR database. AvoinGLAM contributes by supporting further alignment with Wikidata. Read the press release (in Finnish).

Hack4OpenGLAM

Hack4OpenGLAM is an online co-creation event that has been arranged twice (2020 & 2021) by AvoinGLAM in the international context of the Creative Commons Global Summit, supported by Wikimedia Grants. The event invites creators, thinkers, technologists and advocates of Open Access to cultural heritage to come together and learn, design or create together from open content, with open tools, in open collaboration and for the better of the world.

Since the Creative Commons Global Summit is not taking place this year, we are open to new configurations. As an option we are considering finding new host events. Teaming up with a changing host event would produce new encounters with different communities. Another alternative is to become completely independent, but would we lose the opportunity to bring new people together? In any case, we wish to strengthen the network of fellow events, other likeminded events with whom we can share best practices and create activities together.

View the pitching slide deck and get in contact with us if you see a great match.

GLAM Together! at Mozfest

GLAM Together! workshop was arranged 7 March at Mozfest as one of the efforts to bridge between different GLAM communities. The session started with short presentations from the speakers and continued into a collaborative idea generation session. The whiteboard is available until the end of the year, and it will be shared as an archived version later. The recording is available at xxx.

Minne Atairu

Mariana Ziku

Kristen Tscherneshoff

Copyright law discussion

AvoinGLAM organized a discussion event in response to the revised copyright law proposal to identify issues that raise concern in the cultural heritage sector. The GLAM sector's legal group have subsequently published their comment to the law proposal. The preparation of the law took controversial turns this spring when the draft was completely rewritten with no further possibility of commenting it. We are gathering a page about the process in our blog.