Wikimedia Deutschland/2013 annual plan/projects/p20

All 2013 projects | Key theme 3: Establishing free knowledge in society – Goal 4: Cooperations – Change 4.4: Continuing cooperations and identifying new projects

Project description: Zugang gestalten III (Shaping Access) – conference on opening digital access to cultural heritage

• Wikimedia Deutschland will support a two-day conference where cultural institutions and initiatives share their experiences of providing access to and allowing further use of digital cultural content. (P20)

Contact / Project Manager

Barbara Fischer (Politics & Society)

Total budget

€18,000

Implementation period

November 2012 – November 2013

What is the project about?

The conferences, “Ins Netz gegangen – Neue Wege zum kulturellen Erbe” (Caught up in the Internet – New Ways of Accessing Cultural Heritage, 2011) and “Zugang gestalten – Mehr Verantwortung für das kulturelle Erbe” (Shaping Access – More responsibility for cultural heritage, 2012), established a forum where GLAMs could express their views on major questions regarding the provision of access to digital cultural content.

This forum will continue at a conference in October 2013 at which the points of view of GLAMs and of the open-access community will be discussed on the basis of current examples of opening digital access to cultural heritage. As a co-organizer of this event, Wikimedia Deutschland will present itself to cultural institutions and open-access community actors as an attractive partner organization for new collaborative projects.

How will this project help us meet our annual goals?

Our aim is to bring about free licenses for digital access to cultural heritage. However, there is still no broad consensus on this aim in the cultural sector, so we will present and discuss good examples of open digital access to cultural heritage, as well as innovative uses of digital copies, at the conference.

The event’s key task is to promote open access and to provide a venue for mutual encouragement. The conference documentation (stream, website, and printed material) will ensure that people can also continue to share their experiences after the event.

Wikimedia Deutschland is supporting this conference in terms of finance and organization in order to present itself as a competent and exciting partner organization for GLAMs. The aim is to create a basis for access to cultural content via free licenses in these collaborative projects.

What are the key milestones along the way and by when should we reach them?

No.	When	What
1.	November to October, 2013	We will liaise with our partner organizations on the development of a viable program concept for the event. The aim is that this program will include presentations on interesting intersections with the Wikimedia projects.
2.	October 2013	We will publicize the conference in media that are important for GLAM discourse (PR and invitation to the event) in order to present the event as a relevant contribution to discourse on free access to cultural heritage. We will hold the two-day conference.
3.	November 2013	We will analyze the contacts made at the conference, the documentation, and the presentation of the conference papers in terms of helping Wikimedia Deutschland to meet its aim of becoming an important player in this discourse.