OpenGLAM Initiative and Its Latest Project

The Open Knowledge Foundation runs an open-humanities initiative called OpenGLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums), which allows open access to the digital collections of licensed cultural institutions. Some of the institutions accessible through their site contain resources on subjects as wide-ranging as sound recordings, comic strips and fine art. They also list diverse datasets from institutions in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and Denmark.

OpenGLAM provides workshops (that they call ‘projects’, which makes it sound fun and like something you-and-a-friend would like to do) to promote OA in the humanities. They create apps (such as the Bardomatic, which invites users to read and recognize Shakespeare quotations ) and sites like the interactive timelines that chart the Western Front World War I, Medieval Philosophers  and general war history.

OpenGLAM’s latest project sounds equally interesting: Sam Leon, one of their Project Managers, has put out a call-to-arms for anyone to recreate Oxford and Stanford Universities’ Mapping the Republic of Letters. First of all, go check that out if you haven’t already: ‘Mapping the Republic of Letters’ provides a visual representation of the journey taken by the letters passing between historical figures. OpenGLAM is setting the challenge that anyone - you, me, students, academics, bloggers - can create one of their own by scanning and geomapping historical letters. As Leon writes: “I want to see a million 'Mapping the Republic of Letters' projects… I want the underlying tools to be open source and well documented and perhaps, most importantly, I want the underlying data, that collection of metadata about who sent what, when to be open for everyone to use and add to.”

The project runs until the 28^th of May, 2013. Read more about it here.