Maarten Brinkerink's presentation from the Digisam #nordlod conference "Open Cultural Heritage Data in the Nordic Countries" 24 - 25 April 2013

1. OPEN CULTURE DATA:
Opening GLAM Data Bottum-Up
Open Cultural Heritage Data in
the Nordic Countries
Maarten Brinkerink
Malmö, April 24, 2013
t: @OpenCultuurData | #opencultuurdata

2. WHAT
Open Cultuur Data (Open Culture Data) is a
network of cultural professionals, developers,
designers, copyright specialists and open
data experts, that opens cultural data and
encourages the development of valuable
cultural applications. This makes culture
accessible in new ways to a broader public.

3. WHY
Cultural institutions (or GLAMs) have a wealth of information
locked up in their vaults. They preserve and store unique
collections, they have an enourmous amount of knowledge
about these collections (context, metadata), produce
information and collect reactions from visitors.
More and more cultural institutions make this information
digitally accessible. This creates many new opportunities –
for the institutions themselves but also for third parties – to
use this information to create new applications and websites,
allowing us to participate in arts and culture in new ways.
However, this data is often very difficult to access for others.

4. STIMULATING COLLABORATION AND CREATIVITY
“No matter who you are,
most of the smartest people work for someone else.” Joy’s Law
PUBLIC MISSION
“For [GLAM] content to be truly accessible, it needs to be where the users
are, embedded in their daily networked lives.” Waibel and Erway, 2009

5. NEELIE KROES | VICE-president for the EC digital agenda & Open Data
“I urge cultural institutions to open up control
of their data [...] there is a wonderful
opportunity to show how cultural material can
contribute to innovation, how it can become a
driver of new developments. Museums,
archives and libraries should not miss
it.”

7. HOW
Open Cultuur Data supports the cultural heritage
sector in the release of culture data in the following
way:
•encourage making more open culture data available
•collecting culture data sets in a national catalogue
•collecting and sharing knowledge and experience with open
culture data
•encouraging the making of new applications based on open
culture data

8. 1. Open Culture Data is knowledge and
information of cultural institutions,
organisations or initiatives about their
collections and/or works
defining open culture data

9. 2. Everyone can consult, use, spread
and reuse Open Culture Data
(through an open license or by
making material available in the
Public Domain)
defining open culture data

10. 3. Open Culture Data is available in a
digital (standard) format that makes
reuse possible
defining open culture data

11. 4. The structure and possible
applications of Open Culture Data
are documented in a ‘data blog’
defining open culture data

12. 5. The provider of the Open Culture
Data is prepared to answer
questions about the data from
interested parties and respects the
efforts that it costs that the open data
community invests in developing new
applications
defining open culture data

13. • CC0 for metadata
• PDM, CC-BY of CC-BY-SA for
content
• Open standards
• Open documentation &
communication
specific conditions

15. • Ad-hoc start: September 2011
• Contacting heritage professionals to
release datasets
• Writing ‘datablogs’
• 1 hackathon, 8 datasets in November
2011
• Starting point: 5 rules for Open Cultuur
Data
2011: EMERGENCE OF A NETWORK

16. HACKATHON | HACK DE OVERHEID | WORKSHOP
Photo: Breyten Ernsting. CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nl/)

17. HACKATHON | HACK DE OVERHEID | APPS4NL
Photo: Breyten Ernsting. CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nl/)

18. • 13 apps created, 8 app submitted (46 total)
• Gold: Vistory
• Education: Rijksmonumenten.info
• Encouragement: ConnectedCollection
• Categories of submitted apps: Navigating
collections, Games, Data enrichment, Social
media and Tablets
RESULTS APPS4NL

19. APPS: HAY KRANEN, HET VIRTUELE RIJKSMUSEUM

20. Developer: Ronald Klip, Contente Content.
APPS

21. Developers: Hans van den Berg en Arjan den Boer | ab-c
media
APPS

22. Developers: Jonathan Carter, Paul Manwaring, Jeroen van der Linde,
Martin Elshout, Deniz Tezcan (gezamenlijk: Glimworm IT)
APPS: GOUD VOOR VISTORY

23. • 2012: support from Images for the Future and
Creative Commons Netherlands
• April 2012: master classes
• Juni 2012: start competition / hackathon 1
• Oktober 2012, Rotterdam: hackathon 2
• January 2013: Open Culture Data Awards
2012: MASTER CLASS, GROWTH OF THE NETWORK, COMPETITION

24. ARCHIVES
Archief Eemland
Gemeentearchief Rotterdam
Groene Hart Archieven
Nationaal Archief
Regionaal Archief Leiden
LIBRARIES
Wageningen UR bibliotheek
SECTOR INSTITUTES
Kunstfactor
FASE 2: MASTER CLASS OPEN DATA | CREATIVE COMMONS
MUSEUMS
Buurtmuseum Leiden Noord
Centraal Museum
Fries Museum / Keramiekmuseum
Princessehof
Joods Historisch Museum
Maritiem Digitaal/Visserijmuseum Zoutkamp
Teylers Museum
KNOWLEDGE INSTITUTES
Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei
NCB Naturalis
NIOD
Theater Instituut Nederland

25. 17 GLAMs participated
Topics:
#1: Introduction to copyright
#2: Technology and en tools
#3: Reuse and apps
#4: Benefits and risks
#5: Hackathon / evaluation

26. DATASETS (35 and counting…)
More information & documentation:
www.opencultuurdata.nl/datasets

27. THEMES
• Theme WOII (NIOD, Archief Nijmegen, Leiden, 4/5 mei)
• Theme fashion (Amsterdam Museum, Fries Museum, Centraal Museum)
• Theme maps (Groene Hart, Eemland, Nationaal Archief)
• Theme hist. video/ audio (Open Beelden, Geluid van NL)
• Theme press photography (Anefo collectie Nationaal Archief)
• Theme 19th century art (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Mus.)

28. COMPETITION
Powered by

29. THE CHALLENGE
Which apps can bring the best out of culture?
•Apps that expand audience reach and
engagement (online, offline, onsite) of arts
and culture;
•Apps that can reach audiences/ communities
in new and innovative ways;
•Apps that connect different datasets.

30. • 27 apps submitted
• Gold: Muse App
• Silver: Histagram
• Bonze: SimMuseum
• Nationaal Archief-award: Tijdbalk.nl
• Categories of submitted apps: Games,
Content galleries, Creative reuse, Maps and
timelines, History and Tourism
RESULTS …

32. GOUD: MUSE APP: FEMKE VAN DER STER, PETER HENKES, JELLE VAN
DER STER

33. ZILVER: HISTAGRAM: FRONTWISE (RICHARD JONG)

34. BRONS: SIMMUSEUM: HAY KRANEN

35. NATIONAAL ARCHIEF-PRIJS: TIJDBALK.NL: ARJAN DEN BOER

36. Open Images is an open media platform
that offers online access to audiovisual
archive material to stimulate creative
reuse.
Built by Sound and Vision & Knowledgeland but
designed for participation by others.

40. • Open source (MMBase, FFmpeg, LAMP)
• Open media formats (Ogg Theora, WebM)
• Open standards (Dublin Core, CC-REL, HTML 5)
• Open API (OAI-PMH, CC-0)
• Open content (CC-licenses, PD)
OPEN, OPEN, OPEN!

41. • Creative Commons BY - SA as preferable
license
• 3000 items (now over 1800)
• Available in ‘internet quality’
OPEN CONTENT

45. Some numbers:
Estimated length of entire S&V archive: 750,000h
Estimated length of ‘our’ newsreel collection: 500h
Estimated length of material in Open Images: 110h
So currently 22% of ‘our’ newsreel collection is
openly available through Open Images and
0,015% of our entire archive.
05-05-13

46. •Available content items
•~1,600 (2011)
•>1,800 (2012)
•Visits
•>66,000 (2011)
•>105,000 (2012)
•Unique visitors
•~89,000 (2012)
•>53,000 (2011)
05-05-13
IMPACT THROUGH OPENIMAGES.EU

47. •Pageviews
•~280,000 (2012)
•~207,000 (2011)
•Plays
•~11,000 (2011)
•>16,000 (2012)
•Downloads
•~2,400 (tracked since July 2012)
•API calls
•~170,000 (2012)
05-05-13
IMPACT THROUGH OPENIMAGES.EU

51. •Available content items
•~1,600 (2011)
•~1,600 (2012)
•Number of Wikipedia articles reusing the content
items
•~1,000, in 59 languages (2011)
•~1,600, in 65 languages (2012)
•Pageviews of those articles
•~19,000,000 (2011)
•~40,000,000 (2012)
05-05-13
IMPACT TRHOUGH WIKIMEDIA

52. SOME (MAJOR) CHALLENGES
– What are proper metrics to analyse the
impact of external reuse?
– How to value different ‘types of
interaction’ with the open content?
– How does the impact of external reuse
relate to the impact of institutionally
owned channels?

53. • Public mission
• Data enrichment
• Increasing relevance
• Increasing channels to end users
• Brand value
• Specific funding oppurtunities
• Discoverability
• New customers/ users
• Building expertise
• Desired spill-over effects/ creating new business
Source: Verwayen, Arnoldus & Kaufman 2011. The Problem of the Yellow
Milkmaid. Europeana White Paper no. 2.
BENEFITS OF OPEN CULTURE DATA

54. BENEFITS OF OPEN CULTURE DATA

55. ETHAN ZUCKERMAN ON CIVIC ENGAGEMENT

56. • Have access to expertise on the dimensions of
collection
• Buy-in from the senior management is essential =>
focus on value add
• Necessity to invest in engagement with third parties
• Face to face meetups are extremely valuable
(masterclasses f.i.)
• Start with something sweet and small
• On hackatons:
• It doesn’t just happen – lots and lots of effort
• Search for sustainability
• Not all data is equally popular
Lessons Learned

57. • GLAMetrics
• Improve API search
• Executive track
• Focussed challenges (education etc.)
• OpenCultuurData.be
FUTURE WORK

58. SOME RESOURCES
• http://www.opencultuurdata.nl/about
• https://p2pu.org/en/groups/open-glam/
• http://www.openglam.org
• http://avoinglam.fi
• http://mw2013.museumsandtheweb.com/paper

59. • Lotte Belice Baltussen
• Johan Oomen
• Nikki Timmermans
• Maarten Zeinstra
Shout-out

60. www.opencultuurdata.nl
mbrinkerink@beeldengeluid.nl
@mbrinkerink
@OpenCultuurData
#opencultuurdata
THANKS! QUESTIONS?