GLAM Peak Geelong

Wikimedia Australia was a technology partner for the GLAM Peak Digital Access to Collections workshop held at the Geelong Library and Heritage Centre on Tuesday 27 and Wednesday 28 February 2018.

The workshop included welcomes from:

  • Mark Beasley, Manager of the Geelong Heritage Centre Collection & Heritage Centre Services, ‎Geelong Regional Library Corporation
  • Robin Hurst, Co-chair of GLAM Peak.

Day 2 commenced with a tour of the Heritage Centre reading room and repository.

Pru Mitchell and Leigh Blackall attended on behalf of Wikimedia Australia. We were joined by a student intern from RMIT's Bachelor of Design (Communication Design).

Twitter hashtag #digaccess_vic

Who attended?

What we want to learn

Participants in the workshop identified the following aspects of digital access of interest.

  • funding opportunities
  • taking the skills we learn back and train others
  • building enthusiasm
  • managing both physical and digital versions- and linking the two formats on site
  • levels of resourcing and appropriate
  • cataloguing and metadata
  • longevity of digitisation
  • what is best practice for putting content online
  • a code of conduct for putting content online
  • prioritising digitisation tasks
  • copyright
  • identifying copyright and ownership
  • where to start with digitisation
  • the differences between different technical platforms
  • choosing the right technology partners - ensuring they will be there for the longterm
  • pros and cons of outsourcing digitisation
  • how do we host our collection
  • how do we share our collection
  • Search engine optimisation

What worries participants

  • urgency of digitisation
  • budget: paying for equipment and training
  • cultural impact of licensing
  • accessibility - to our community, keeping access simple
  • amount of time spent
  • making mistakes in our work
  • archiving and backup
  • long term viability of the entities hosting technology and content
  • technology changes so quickly - what is the exit strategy
  • how to migrate data between management systems
  • succession planning and sharing this corporate knowledge
  • copyright and licensing
  • how to give permission for re-use
  • fear of losing control of content
  • resources: time, money, skills
  • format obsolesence
  • choosing what to digitise
  • enough people trained to do the job

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