Cultural heritage organizations are collaborating with community partners to tell history in innovative and interactive ways. How do we design workflows to capture community content, how can we share content “sustainably”, and why does it matter? This session will focus on best practices for gathering community contributions whether you’re collaborating in a physical space or virtually. We’ll share some “lessons learned” on working with cultural heritage data.

1. Creating and Collecting
“Open” Cultural Heritage
Collections
Loren Fantin and Jess Posgate
Digital Odyssey 2015

2. Agenda
Introduction
Best practices for cultural heritage collections
Community collections in action
** Ask questions anytime
** Break at some point

3. What is Open Data?
An idea.
A principle.
“Open means anyone can freely access, use,
modify and share for any purpose (subject, at
most, to requirements that preserve provenance
and openness).”
opendefinition.org

4. Open Data Portals

5. Cultural data “exports”

6. Cultural data “apps”

7. Creating value

8. How does open relate to cultural heritage
collections? Or…
Why does it matter to us?
We manage (create/collect) our collections in a
networked environment – it is shared and
distributed (“web-scaled”)
“Our role is to be cultural stewards (not cultural
hoarders).” [Tweet]

9. Repurpose, re-use of data
Create once, use many times in different spaces
requires:
Smart data (structured, linked)
and
Data portability (export, crosswalks,
permissions)

10. Act locally, think globally

11. Q: How many of you re-use the data from your
content management systems in other
places/spaces?
Q: Can you easily export data from the
systems/spaces yourselves?

12. “Metadata is a love note to the future”
Christine Orr

13. Metadata Requirements
• Data you create/capture (descriptive,
administrative, structural, technical) needs to be
“smart”:
– Standard (community, content, etc…)
– Shared (exportable)
– Extensible (in various data formats)

14. Locally: Metadata Application Profile
• Data elements to be included
• Status of each element:
- Mandatory
- Recommended
- Optional

15. Definition of how each element is used
or completed, e.g. Media Type:

16. Metadata Output

18. Metadata = more options

20. Source data

23. Data is “messy”
•Description is very subjective
•Social media isn’t helping with “tagging”
•Let’s try it…

24. o Audio
o Genealogical Resource
o Image
o Newspaper
o Publication
o Text
o Video

26. o Audio
o Genealogical Resource
o Image
o Newspaper
o Publication
o Text
o Video

29. Other Standards & Best Practices
Extensibility goes beyond metadata
•Open formats
•Linked data
•Platform choices

30. Data quality & transformation
•Exportable data
•Manipulate data
•Systemic vs human
•What does it take…?
Consider migration

34. File formats
CSV vs. XSL
TIFF, JPG vs. Photoshop (PSD)
TXT vs. DOC
MPEG-4 vs. Quicktime

35. Hugh’s Postcard (& Photo) Collection:
“Bridge at Stoney River”.tif
HCMA_LPC_20100103_00001.ti
f (<32 characters)
File Naming: Best Practices
Bad file name
Good file name

36. Unique (Resource Identifier) (URI)
•As part of metadata, need a way to uniquely
identify the resource
•Needs to be identifiable outside of the context in
which the record was created, as part of the web
ecosystem
•Essential component for linked open data

37. URLs (Semantic aka “Clean”)
“We strongly believe in the URL as interface. It’s
nice to be able to read a URL and guess what it
might bring back.”
http://collections.vam.ac.uk/information/information_apigettingstarted

38. Platform (Tools)
• Cloud based or hosted?
• Open source or proprietary?
• Interactive options for community engagement?
• Optimized for web discovery
and devices (semantic web)?
• Exportable options?

39. Good data management
If the data you need still exists,
If you found the data you need,
If you understand the data you found,
If you trust the data you understand,
If you can use the data you trust;
Someone did a good job of data management.
Rex Sanders – USGS – Santa Cruz

40. Public expectations and re-use
“People assume the right to co-opt and redistribute
institutional content, not just to look at it. They seek
opportunities for creative expression, both self-directed
and in response to the media they consume. They want to
be respected and responded to because of their unique
interests. They crave the chance to be recognized by and
connected to sympathetic communities around the
world. These shifts will change the way that cultural
institutions of all types, from museums to libraries to for-
profit ‘experience vendors,’ do business.”
http://www.participatorymuseum.org/imagining/

41. Copyright
• Determine copyright status of EVERY object
– Ownership vs. copyright
• Internal tracking
– Track copyright status, copyright owner,
donor, etc. (include as part of the metadata
record)
• Copyright statement displayed as part of the
record

42. Copyright
Creative
Commons
Citation

43. Creative Commons
• Creative Commons develops, supports, and stewards
legal and technical infrastructure that maximizes digital
creativity, sharing, and innovation.
http://creativecommons.org/about
• Assign Creative Commons licenses to indicate to users
how they can share, remix, or use objects from the collection
in ways that are consistent with the copyright status
http://wiki.creativecommons.org/FAQ

44. Searching via permissions

47. Evolving rights framework
Flickr offering Creative Commons licensing
since 2004
1) option of being able to tag an item as being
in the Public Domain
2) CC0 – waive copyright and place in the
public domain

50. Creative Commons: Choose a license tool

51. Community collections in practice…
Cultural heritage collections contribute to public
memory by building the “community” archive.
Crowdsourcing around those collections invites
meaningful community and civic engagement.

52. A real-life tale

53. Capturing community collections
•Analog scanning via digitization days
•Web uploads of individual items
•Curating community contributions

60. “Community” archives

62. Photo by David Carson, dcarson@post-dispatch.com

64. Capturing community knowledge
•Comments
•Questions
•Crowdsourcing metadata via tools and
transcriptions

65. Comments

72. Metadata capture from the crowd: form

74. Augmenting metadata

76. Transcription

78. Metadata capture
•Capture as much data as you can at the moment
•Adhere to standards
•Use a template or form
•Enrich the metadata being captured

79. Terms and permissions

82. “Standard” permissions

84.  Permissions and Rights
•You need the correct set of rights at moment of
contribution
•Have options in your agreement
•Either written permission or I agree checkmark
•In plain language so contributor understands what
they are agreeing to
•Adhere to standards like Creative Commons

85. Communities/Collaboration/Engagement

89. Collaboration and Engagement Benefits
• Achieve goals your organization couldn’t
achieve on its own
• Engage with the community in new ways
• Use the expertise and knowledge of the “crowd”
• Improve data – improve the quality, add
additional information, make it searchable
• Allow community to engage with the collections
and each other in new ways

90. Open heritage is…
• Trusting
• Participatory
• Connections
between collections (data)
between collections and people
between people around our collections
• Sustainable

91. Resources
A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital
Collections:
http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/2/fra
mework3.pdf
Normalizing data: OpenRefine.org
File naming: https://dmptool.org/dm_guidance#types
CDL Digital File Format Recommendations:
http://www.cdlib.org/gateways/docs/cdl_dffr.pdf

92. Resources continued
Data Management:
http://guides.library.ualberta.ca/content.php?pid=524929&s
id=4389852
Linked Open Data – What is it? (Video):
https://vimeo.com/36752317
Canadian Copyright FAQ:
http://ourdigitalworld.org/services/resources/general-rules-
for-canadian-copyright/

93. Loren Fantin: lfantin@ourdigitalworld.org
Jess Posgate: jposgate@ourdigitalworld.org
Thank you!