We want to hear from Open GLAM in underrepresented communities.
The Open GLAM survey by Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace has revealed a global picture where “Open GLAM” (“Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums”) seems to be happening mainly in the US and Europe. However, these types of maps and visualizations can also be tricky. The data collected might be reflecting particular data biases rather than the real practice happening in the ground.
There are institutions and practitioners in the Global South and in underrepresented communities that are participating in Open GLAM, through documenting intangible heritage, through releasing public domain content, or that might have good reasons to carefully approach “Open GLAM”. The reasons why these stories might not hit the front lines might vary, but sometimes it’s because the people behind those stories don’t have the time, the resources or the ability to produce them. Sometimes it’s very hard to run a volunteer project and then also write about that experience altogether.
To encourage people to write about those stories and document their practices and experiences, the Open GLAM Platform of Creative Commons approved to allocate a total of USD4,800 to produce a total of 16 pieces or stories, paying USD300 a piece to the person or groups writing them. We expect to grant half the money to stories coming from Africa and the remaining half to the rest of the Global South and/or underrepresented communities.
For the purposes of this call, underrepresented includes the following categories:
- Global South countries (see https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_regional_classification)
- Ethnic and racial minorities
- Indigenous people and communities
- LGBTQ++ diversities
- People with disabilities
These stories will be published under a Creative Commons license (CC BY, CC BY SA or CC0) through the Open GLAM Medium publication, edited by Douglas McCarthy and Evelin Heidel.
Applications are now closed.
We want to thank to the committee composed by Douglas McCarthy, Mariana Ziku and Franziska Latell for their generous work evaluating the stories.