Fwd: Study of the GLAM sector in Australia

Heya,

Attached is a report "Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums” [2]

My initial thoughts are that heritage provides an environment where issues such as provenance are of high-value.  The capacity to create inclusive methods for social-data contributions (i.e. identifying objects in pictures, etc.) needs to be met with some pre-requisites around ‘curation’ (ensuring the collection isn’t spammed, and that arbitration may be provided where necessary).  

Another example; Ideally licensing would provide capacity for students to use the work freely; however given these are public institutions, if images are printed for hanging on the wall at someones home, or used in a book or commercial TV Show - why should the print service make % on their service, but public funds not receive $? for the commercial use of their asset; or as otherwise may be described,

Where the use-case of the object is outside of the Creative Commons license. 

Some of these payment and validation concepts we’re working through via Credentials / Web-Payments (understanding WebID may have a role too).

Chris Winter, has been involved in producing the attached report [2].

I’ve demonstrated how to get seniors 'losslessly’ digitising heritage, creating derivatives, which is now a definable solution.  The reality is, that often these smaller collection owners - they know who’s in those photos just by looking at them, but it’s not on the card.  Within these smaller communities  my thinking is that beyond the DAM, Omeka[1] is an awfully useful presentation system (that needs some GUI work) and has a starting-point for Linked-Data integration needed to create bridges between traditional Web 2 type services, towards those of Web 3. 

If, in smaller (especially regional) communities heritage and ‘civics’ is used to conquer ‘digital divide’ issues; the flow-on effect brings digital media capabilities into these regional centres, which can aid in stimulating their local economies in other ways.

Your Thoughts?

My thoughts are that i’d very much like to aid the growth of digitisation programs locally here in Australia, hopefully working with collaborators overseas.   I believe the solutions need to be designed in a way that provides decentralised management of catalogues, with a means / methodology - to provide infrastructure services via localised stakeholder groups.  

standards are remarkably important; and unfortunately, 

i’m not sure they’re well understood - nor, do i believe the business systems surrounding the methodologies or concepts embedded in these technological capabilities, are easily interpreted by traditional ‘digital leads’ within many organisations. 

aggregation seems to be an awfully attractive concept.  Yet equally, the practicality that once you find some record of national significance, that’s been stored in some attic, or shoebox, or bunker - then it’s reasonable to desire that the physical record is not stored in a building that’s a fire-risk.  This is distinct from the real-life situation that those seniors who volunteer in those buildings, bringing their own lunch, their own tea & coffee, learning how to use computers, to digitise their memories, their parents memories - sometimes the romanticised versions, but regardless - more data than is on the photo - and regardless.

it’s one heck of a lot easier to get a 70+ year old seniors fighting to take control of the digital library; than could ever be imagined if someone attempted to teach them how to use computers, by teaching them Facebook.

The problem is of course; perhaps it’s our job to figure out how to empower them to do so, and that’s quite an endeavour… 

yet - as noted.  The very complex relationships are somewhat similar in function to that of other industries where the content is far more sensitive. 


TimH.


[1] http://omeka.org/
[2] http://www.csiro.au/Portals/Media/Australian-museums-risk-becoming-digital-dinosaurs.aspx

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Chris Winter <chriswinter99@gmail.com>
> Subject: Study of the GLAM sector in Australia
> Date: 21 September 2014 3:10:35 pm AEST
> To: Timothy Holborn <timothy.holborn@gmail.com>
> 
> Attached! And thanks for your call.
> Chris
> 
>