GLAM Working Group

Introduction

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The GLAM Working Group’s mission is to strengthen the cooperation between libraries, archives, museums, heritage institutions, and the Arts and Humanities in the area of digital infrastructures. Its activities aim towards building a scholarly community of practice focusing on sharing data, tools, services, and knowledge to produce digitally enabled scholarship that is reusable, visible, and sustainable.

 

The working group is coordinated by:

• Iolanda Pensa (SUPSI)

• Cristina Grisot (DARIAH-CH)

• Rita Gautschy (DaSCH)

• Christiane Sibille (ETH Library)

• Pierre-Louis Blanchard (Swiss National Museum)

• Heike Bazak (Museum of Communication / PTT-ARCHIV)

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Overarching objectives:

• Support thematic projects that can facilitate a conversation between the GLAM institutions, including their respective networks, and scientific research areas with respect to opening data and carrying out joint projects.

• Establish good collaboration relationships with public administrations of cantons with the aim to facilitate the GLAM institutions’ participation in joint projects with arts and humanities scientific research

• Identify national and European multiplier entities and onboard them in the DARIAH-CH GLAM WG

• Coordinate with related initiatives at the European level, especially thematic working groups, such as DARIAH, Europeana, Wikimedia, and others.​​​​

 

2026 objectives and lines of action:

Objective 1: Organise Thematic Community Events

• Organise a series of focused events to support exchange between the GLAM community, research infrastructures, and researchers. This includes a DaSCHConGLAM in Spring 2026 with a focus on infrastructure-related topics, followed by DaSCHCon Autumn 2026 on advanced imaging technologies such as 3D and the new IIIF API, of interest to both research and OpenGLAM communities. 

Objective 2: Build and Grow a Community of Practice

• Strengthen the existing GLAM-related community by formalising it as a community of practice. The aim is to bring together current and new participants, support regular exchange, and grow the community in a sustainable way, while avoiding overload.

Objective 3: Provide Training and Capacity Building

• Contribute GLAM-focused content to the DARIAH-CH Training Series autumn 2026 and the SSH Open Marketplace 2026 Training Series, including sessions on imaging techniques for cultural heritage data, such as 2D and 3D workflows. These trainings will help prepare participants for upcoming events and will be complemented by hands-on workshops addressing timely and practical topics.

Objective 4: Prepare GLAMHack Challenges

• Prepare GLAMHack challenges that bring together GLAM professionals, developers, and designers to work with open cultural heritage data. A dedicated pre-event on data preparation and responsible reuse will help ensure datasets are ready and participants are aware of legal and ethical considerations. This phase will build on an existing list of datasets and support meaningful reuse of GLAM data.