Hacking Culture into Open Data: How Dutch GLAMs Manage to Reach an

Audience of Millions Through Wikimedia Every Month

Maarten Brinkerink Netherlands Institute for Sound and

VisionWikimuseums, Napels, May 6th, 2016

t: @OpenCultuurData | #opencultuurdata

WHAT IS OPEN CULTUUR DATA?

Open Cultuur Data is a network of GLAM professionals, developers, designers, creators, makers, IPR-experts and open data experts.It opens up culture and stimulates the development of new applications. By doing so culture in the broadest sense is made accessible for a larger audience.

Open Cultuur Data is initiated by Open State Foundation, Kennisland and the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision.

FIRST MEETING

Photo: Breyten Ernsting. CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nl/)

MEETUPS

CLASS OF 2014

READER

HACKATHONS

Photo: Breyten Ernsting. CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/nl/)

CULTURE APP CHALLENGE

CHALLENGES

“The challenge for the heritage sector is to develop a rich and stable semi-finished product that both third parties and heritage institutions can, in turn, use to develop new products themselves.”Source: National Digital Heritage Strategy

CHALLENGES

“What are the costs and benefits of making collections [openly] available to the public?”Source: National Digital Heritage Strategy

ENTER WIKIMEDIA

WHY WIKIMEDIA?

• GLAM-Wiki has opened up numerous heritage objects worldwide, from that start Dutch GLAMs have been actively involved

• Wikimedia offers several public tools to measure the reuse and reach of these object within Wikimedia

• Since 2014 Open Cultuur Data structurally measures the reuse and reach of objects from Dutch GLAMs through Wikimedia

REUSE

REUSE

REUSE

REUSE

Reach through Wikimedia relates to the number of times a web page on Wikimedia (including Wikipedia) with one or more Dutch heritage objects is consulted.– It remains unknown how much attention from the reader these objects actually receive

REACH THROUGH WIKIMEDIA

• 29 Dutch GLAMs on Wikimedia– Archives, museums & (university) libraries– Latest addition 5 months ago– Earliest collaboration 6 years ago

• Almost 880,000 objects on Wikimedia– Photos, scanned artworks, audio and video recordings, etc.

– Almost 3% of the entire Wikimedia Commons repository

DUTCH GLAMS on Wikimedia

• Currently almost 54,000 unique objects are reused (more than 6% of the total offering)

• In total these objects are being reused more than 148,000 times,

• The reused objects are spread across more than 110,000 pages – almost 23,000 pages on the Dutch Wikipedia– almost 14,000 pages on the English Wikipedia– on average objects are used in almost 56 languages

Reuse on WIKIMEDIA

• March 2016 the more than 110,000 pages together generated more than 155 million page views (this is in one month)– Although there are fewer English than Dutch Wikipedia articles, the English Wikipedia is responsible for six times the amount of traffic

• In six years time, pages containing Dutch heritage objects together have generated more than 3 billion page views!!!

REACH THROUGH WIKIMEDIA

• Based on the Dutch experience, 6% reuse for digital heritage collections donated to Wikimedia can be expected – The average percentage is actually higher at almost 28%

• For every object contributed by a GLAM, the institution can expect more than 1100 page views monthly, through articles that reuse (some of) these objects

(PRELIMINARY) PROGNOSIS

www.opencultuurdata.nl@opencultuurdatambrinkerink@beeldengeluid.nl@mbrinkerink

Thanks to:Maarten Zeinstra, Jesse de Vos, Lotte Belice Baltussen, Nikki Timmermans, Tom Kunzler, Tijmen Schep, Maarten Dammers, Hay Kranen, Magnus Manske, the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science & the Dutch Embassy in Rome

CONTACT DETAILS & ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS