Press releases/GLAM-WIKI
"Being a beloved institution will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of being an irrelevant one."
“GLAM-WIKI:UK” [Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums & Wikimedia]
26-27 November, British Museum, Clore Education Centre. List of speakers.....
Press Statement in Support of Conference. Embargoed until November 15.
Should Galleries, Libraries, Arts & Museums (GLAM) take the funding hit on the chin and act accordingly OR should they seek to build an online e-volunteer strategy that brings their collections to a wider audience than now – how does a potential audience of 373m people sound?
Is there a danger that any future cuts to cultural heritage funding might mean the sector is knocked off its feet and will take several years to recover, OR, are there creative ways in which the online e-voluntary sector can help it to co-create imaginative alternatives that allow it to produce more from less – could working with the Wikimedia movement be the answer?
Blogger, scientist and online futurologist Cory Doctorow (speaking at the GLAM-Wiki Conference on Nov 26) told Wikimedia UK that “"trading funding for relevance is a bad bargain” .....could the new age of economic austerity hasten the demise of smaller galleries, libraries, arts and museums as being starved of funding leads them down the pathway to irrelevancy...”. Cuts to funding mean that the pathway to irrelevancy is now opening up in front of many as a real threat. This conference is about solutions that can stop such a disastrous thing ever happening. It seeks to (maybe put the bits in I wrote about what a delegate learns by attending here).
“To use the jargon of today,” says Chair of Wikimedia UK, Andrew Turvey, “There is an alternative!” It is one that the sector should consider now as spending priorities for future years are set and operational budgets for the next 24 years become clearer. It is working closer with the voluntary sector. Many organisations, like Wikimedia UK, have as their core objectives the diffusion of common cultural heritage to as wide an audience as possible as part of their operational objectives. These include state funded bodies such as the Arts Council (and some other Library/Gallery body that I know not the name); Friends Groups that raise funds for these organisations, local councils and the private sector where a lot of sponsorship money is raised. Now it is time for the guardians of our cultural heritage to realise that they should build a stronger partnership with e-voluntary organisations – and Wikimedia UK (responsible for the promotion of the core values of the global Wikimedia movement that has created the Wikipedia project) is part of this solution.
Wikimedia UK is ready to listen to the problems facing the guardians of our culture heritage. Our community wants us to work more closely with the sector to explore ways in which we can leverage our presence as the world’s fifth biggest set of websites – and bring it to the benefit of institutions that are bold and that release content to Wikipedia and our other projects. Having a small percentage of an institutions content on our sites will create a buzz across the online world that could lead to both cultural and perhaps commercial benefits for the donors – in terms of more hits to their website. Indeed, closer links to Wikipedia and other projects will add valuable ‘Wiki-juice’ to the search engine results online and mean that smaller bodies will likely see a rise in interest in what they do.
Next?