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Sharing is Caring 2017: DIGITISATION AND SOCIAL IMPACT?

The digitisation of cultural heritage collections has been going on for several decades now, promising unprecedented potentials for the GLAM sector to fulfil its public mission of opening up knowledge and culture to the participation and enjoyment of all citizens. As stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 27.1,

Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.

The big question is, how can the GLAM sector demonstrate that we are achieving this ambition through the digitally powered public engagement efforts we have been developing on the base of digitisation? Increasingly, politicians and funders are demanding numbers to show that the tax or private money spent on culture have tangible social impact. How have people’s opportunities to learn, create and contribute to their culture and society improved after we started providing access to digitised collections? Is it even possible to produce hard evidence of such improvements?

Venue : Aarhus, Denmark – The 2017 European Capital of Culture Date: November 20-21 2017

The conference was livestreamed and documented in collaboration with MMEx. Watch it on YouTube.

Please note: Due to technical failure during the livestream, some of the sessions were unfortunately not recorded.

Keynote: Elizabeth Merritt

GLAMS in a Digital Future

Times of rapid change challenge organizations to revisit the assumptions underlying their existing practices. Some companies thrive by reinventing their business models while others fail to understand how their strengths align with new opportunities. GLAMs (Galeries, Libraries, Archives, Museums)—as individual organizations and as a sector—need to examine how the rise of open, digital culture may transform the core value they offer to society.

About Elizabeth Merritt
Vice President, Strategic Foresight and Founding Director, Center for the Future of Museums, at the American Alliance of Museums

Believing that museums can change the world, Elizabeth Merritt is devoted to helping museums create a brighter future for their communities. As founding director of the American Alliance of Museums’ Center for the Future of Museums, she applies the tools of strategic foresight to the nonprofit realm. Ms. Merritt conducts trends forecasting and scenario development for museums, sharing her work through publications, social media and presentations. She is the author of CFM’s annual TrendsWatch report and produces the weekly e-newsletter Dispatches from the Future of Museums. She frequently keynotes at conferences in the US and abroad. In recent years, her work has expanded to encompass libraries, orchestras and opera as well. Elizabeth earned has her B.S. from Yale and an M.A. in cell and molecular biology from Duke University, as well as training in futures studies at the University of Houston.

Speaker: Harry Verwayen

Deputy Director, Europeana

A GLAM toolbox for assessing impact

Harry Verwayen will give an overview of the state-of the art of ‘impact’ thinking in our sector ranging from the theoretical to the very practical day to day application of it. You will get an insight in impact as a useful concept, the tools and methodologies that have been developed to design, assess and narrate impact, and practical examples of institutions that have used this methodology to their advantage, like Europeana and SMK Open.

Learn more about the impact toolbox

About Harry Verwayen
Harry Verwayen is the Deputy Director of Europeana. He is responsible for making sure that the organisation meets its objectives, and do it well. What he likes to do more than anything else though is to design and implement new business models that will change our way of thinking about heritage as an enabler of societal and economic growth. Lately, much of his attention and effort is directed towards the developments of the sharing economy. A visual thinker, he needs a white board as much as a strong coffee.

Speaker: Tim Sherratt

Access is never simply ‘open’

It’s a struggle for meaning, power, and value. I’m interested in using digital tools to see collections differently, to create opportunities for reflection and resistance. From Australia’s racist immigration policies, to the encroachments of state surveillance, I’ll be exploring how digital access changes the types of questions we can ask of the past.

About Tim Sherratt
Tim Sherratt is a historian and hacker who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections. Tim has worked across the cultural heritage sector and has been developing online resources relating to libraries, archives, museums and history since 1993. He’s currently Associate Professor of Digital Heritage at the University of Canberra. Tim’s tools and experiments include important things like The Real Face of White Australia, useful things like QueryPic, and strange things like The Vintage Face Depot. You can find him at timsherratt.org or as @wragge on Twitter.

Picture © Christopher Brothers 2012 

Speaker: Rob Stein

Chief Program Officer, American Alliance of Museums

Can the cultural sector really change lives?

For those of us working in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, we believe that answer to be a resounding yes. However, demonstrating this impact – beyond anecdotal evidence – has proven to be devilishly hard. Why is that the case?

While the cultural sector has progressed significantly to adopt technology that can exhibit collections, engage audiences, and document histories – have we missed the chance to prove why those things are important in the first place? As support for culture seems to be under continual threat, galleries, libraries, archives, and museums must leverage these technical skills to deliver measurable social impact lest we risk being sidelined as recreational, superficial, and optional.

Let’s explore together the ways that cultural organizations can advance our work in this area and document the proof of change we see every day.

About Rob Stein
Robert Stein is a museum leader, technology expert, and strategist with deep experience in the museum field heading up innovative projects and diverse teams. In April 2016, Rob joined the American Alliance of Museums as the Executive Vice President and Chief Program Officer to lead the organization’s programming efforts in service to both national and global audiences. In that role, Stein is responsible for key strategic initiatives including the expansion of the Alliance’s role as a thought leader, content provider, and global catalyst for excellence in the field of museums.

Rob is a sought after author, speaker, and consultant, focusing on the impact museums can have in their community, how technology efforts can change the dynamic of museum innovation, and how metrics and measurement can drive continuous improvement for the practice of museums.

Stein is active in service to the museum field having served as a board member of the Museum Computer Network, an active member of the International Program Committee of Museums and the Web, and as a National Advisor to the Education Committee of AAM. He is currently a Senior Advisor to the National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University.

Speaker: Marie Østergaard

Dokk1 – Building on a Burning Platform

Dokk1 – Aarhus’ new main library – opened in June 2015. The talk will focus on Dokk1 as a result of many years of prototyping, design thinking, testing, researching and a highly inclusive process as well as discuss how Dokk1 has become an example of what can come from the emergent necessity of rethinking spaces, services and community engagement. Working intensely with involvement of a massive amount of new and non-traditional partnerships on all levels of the organization in order to develop new service designs and events, space praxis has been redefined. Through user involvement the identity and spaces in Dokk1 have changed our library identity forever. It has turned the library into a city square, with all the transparency, diversity and mutual ownership that follows such a change.

About Marie Østergaard
Marie is Library Director at Aarhus Public Libraries. Since 2001, she has been part of Aarhus Public Libraries’ development of the physical library of the future. Focusing on interactions, user-involvement, network-development, prototyping and communication in the physical library space, Aarhus has investigated new technologies, involvement processes and learning. In a wide range of projects and processes with users, network and partners she has focused on the development of the “next library” – the library of the future. From 2005, Marie was the project leader of the building of Dokk1, implementing and developing these ideas as well as introducing new forms of user- and citizen involvement in the planning and building of Dokk1. Marie is also part of Ineli – International Network of Emerging Library Innovators.

Ignite sessions Aarhus

What’s the impact of digitisation?

The digitisation of cultural heritage collections has been going on for several decades now, promising unprecedented potentials for the GLAM sector to fulfil its public mission of opening up knowledge and culture to the participation and enjoyment of all citizens. The big question is, how do we demonstrate that we actually achieve this ambition through our digitally powered work?

Ignite session kickoff at Sharing is Caring 2015. Photo CCBY-NC 2.0 Thomas Christensen

A range of amazing ignite speakers responded to the challenge and gave us an insight in the tangible impact of their work.

1. Dialogue that makes an impact
Helle Bech Madsen, Manager
DR Archives, the Danish Broadcasting Corporation

2. MIXOSCOPE – remix old photos from the Danish colony in the West Indies
Mette Toxwærd, Project Leader
Ditte Laursen, Head of Department
Royal Danish Library

3. What happened to Giovanna Tornabuoni? Tracking a masterpiece on the Internet
Helena Barranha, Assistant Professor
Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa

4. How to use gigapixel digitizations to create impacting experiences for your users
Koldo Garcia, Co-Founder
Madpixel

5. Art Jewels: Sparking engagement with museum collections through digital design
Victoria Martinez, European Community Manager
Shapeways

6. Making Access to Art Easy: Kunstportalen.louisiana.dk
Helle Søndergaard, Art Educator
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art

7. ECHY studio: Cross-Generational Research at the University of Hamburg
Ragna Quellmann, Bachelor of Arts
Olivia Stracke, Student of Cultural Anthropology
University of Hamburg

8. Caring about what you are sharing: rightsstatements.org
Harry Verwayen, Deputy Director
Europeana

Workshops

Sharing is Caring: Digitisation and Social Impact? will feature three parallel workshops, all offering hands-on approaches to increasing the impact you and your institution can have in society.

1 / How to turn the museum into a public space for engagement

Workshop leader
Marianne Grymer Bargeman, Director of Learning and Interpretation at ARoS Aarhus Kunstmuseum and Head of ARoS Public

2 / How to boost your collection visibility and impact on Wikipedia

Workshop leaders 
Karen Williams, Project manager at Statsbiblioteket / Det Kgl. Bibliotek Aarhus
Finn Årup Nielsen, Senior Researcher, DTU Compute at the Technical University of Denmark
Majken Astrup, Communication & Project manager at AU Library, Campus Emdrup

3 / How to capture the social impact of your institution’s work


Workshop leaders
Harry Verwayen, Deputy Director at Europeana
Merete Sanderhoff, Curator & Senior Advisor at Statens Museum for Kunst


Venue

The Sharing is Caring workshops are kindly hosted by the new interactive museum space ARoS Public at ARoS Art Museum in the centre of Aarhus.

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