Google Open Gallery

Google's new initiative Open Gallery gives free tools for artists, museums, archives and galleries to create galleries:

http://www.google.com/opengallery

More about the initiative can be found here:

http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/12/10/google-launches-open-gallery-help-museum-gallery-create-online-exhibits/#!px1eH

Terms and Conditions are as follows:

Your Content in our Platform

Our Platform allows you to submit content. You retain ownership of any intellectual property rights that you hold in that content. In short, what belongs to you stays yours.Our Platform will give you the option to make your content discoverable either (a) narrowly, through Google Open Gallery only; or (b) broadly, through both Google Open Gallery and other Google products and services (collectively, the "Discoverability Options").

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Platform, you give Google (and those we work with) a non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Platform), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content according to the Discoverability Options you select through the Platform.

The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating and promoting the Platform, and improving the discoverability of your content according to the Discoverability Options you select through the Platform.

You can access and remove your content from the Platform at any time, and we will stop using the content that you provided through the Platform as soon as our systems are able to delete the content from our licensed content databases. Also, there are terms or settings that narrow the scope of our use of the content submitted through the Platform. Make sure you have the necessary rights to grant us this license for any content that you submit to our Platform.

You are solely responsible for the selection and organization of your content on the Platform. Your use of the Platform is subject to the Google Open Gallery Content Policy. We may suspend or stop providing the Platform to you if you do not comply with our terms or policies.

Because we believe you should decide whether and how to directly monetize your content, you can choose to monetize your content through the Platform; Google will not charge fees for, display advertisements alongside, or otherwise monetize your content through the Platform. If you select a Discoverability Option that allows your content to be broadly discoverable through other Google products and services, the advertising and monetization policies of those other Google products and services will apply.

If you have a Google Account, we may display your Profile name, Profile photo, and actions you take on Google or on third-party applications connected to your Google Account (such as +1s, reviews you write and comments you post) in our Platform, including displaying in ads and other commercial contexts. We will respect the choices you make to limit sharing or visibility settings in your Google Account. For example, you can choose your settings so your name and photo do not appear in an ad.

You can find more information about how Google uses and stores content in the privacy policy or additional terms for particular Platform. If you submit feedback or suggestions about our Platform, we may use your feedback or suggestions without obligation to you.

Horizon 2020

Horizon 2020 is a €80 billion EU Research and Innovation programme with funding available over 7 years (2014 to 2020). Horizon 2020 is the financial instrument implementing the Innovation Union, a Europe 2020 flagship initiative aimed at securing Europe's global competitiveness.

Seen as a means to drive economic growth and create jobs, Horizon 2020 has the political backing of Europe’s leaders and the Members of the European Parliament. They agreed that research is an investment in our future and so put it at the heart of the EU’s blueprint for sustainable and inclusive growth and jobs.

By coupling research and innovation, Horizon 2020 has an emphasis on science, industrial leadership and tackling societal challenges. The goal is to ensure Europe produces world-class science, removes barriers to innovation and makes it easier for the public and private sectors to work together in delivering innovation.

Societal Challenges

Horizon 2020 reflects the policy priorities of the Europe 2020 strategy and addresses major concerns shared by citizens in Europe and elsewhere. One of the challenges identified is called Europe in a changing world - Inclusive, innovative and reflective societies (big on cultural memory). The work programme is available below:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/wp/2014_2015/main/h2020-wp1415-societies_en.pdf

Participant Portal

UKRO has released a short explanation on the new participant portal for Horizon 2020 here:

http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/desktop/en/home.html

The new European Commission Research Participant Portal will from now on be the official place to look for Horizon 2020 documentation and the official guidance documents

A Definition of Memory

Jan Assmann:

Memory is knowledge with an identity-index, it is knowledge about oneself, that is, one’s own diachronic identity, be it as an individual or as a member of a family, a generation, a community, a nation, or a cultural and religious tradition (p. 114).

Digital Culture: How Arts and Cultural Organisations in England use Technology

Arts Council England, the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Nesta have commissioned independent research agency MTM to track the use of digital technology by arts and cultural organisations in England between 2013 and 2015.

Download the full report or the report summary here:

http://native.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DigitalCulture_FullReport.pdf

http://native.artsdigitalrnd.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/DigitalCulture_Summary.pdf

Results are now available from the first year survey of 891 arts and cultural organisations, including digital activities, barriers, enablers and impacts. It shows that arts and cultural organisations have transformed their marketing and operations through digital technology, with many reaching bigger and more diverse audiences than ever before. They are also seeing major benefits for creation and distribution, whilst in other areas like new revenue generation, important opportunities remain.

Further details can be found here:

http://www.museumsassociation.org/comment/17012014-mia-ridge-museums-need-to-explode-the-myth-that-they-are-technologically-backward

Museums on the Web 2013 (MCG)

The Museums Computer Group’s 2013 Museums on the Web conference was held at Tate Modern on 15 November 2013. The theme for UKMW13 was ‘Power to the People’. Links, photos, slides and further information are available at: http://bit.ly/1hi19NB

Time		Session		Speakers
9.30		Registration. Tea and coffee sponsored by Squiz. Game: ‘Curate-a-Fact’ begins.
10:00-10.20		Chair’s welcome, venue welcome and sponsor welcome		Mia Ridge, MCG John Stack, Tate Bert Degenhart Drenth, AdLib
10.20-10.50		Opening Keynote Lessons the Guardian has learnt about community engagement online		Hannah Freeman, Guardian Community coordinator for culture
10.50-11.20		Tea and coffee break, sponsored by Squiz.
11.20-12.20		Learn and play (inside and outside the organisation) Chair: Andrew Lewis, V&A
		First Rule: Talking about Computer Club		Jesse Alter and Simon Delafond, Imperial War Museums (IWM)
		The power of Flickr Commons		Nicole Cama, Australian National Maritime Museum
		Ten Most Wanted: Hunting down missing information about cultural artefacts		Marcus Winter, University of Brighton; Susan Lambert, Arts University Bournemouth; Phil Blume, Adaptive Technologies
12.20-12:50		MCG Annual General Meeting
12:50-1:50		Lunch break, sponsored by Stickyworld
1:50-2:20		Lightning talks Chair: Irida Ntalla
		Jane Finnis, Culture24 – Let’s Get Real. James Morley- GathrIt, a prototype toolset to enable discovery, crowdsourcing and sharing across cultural collections Sarah Saunders, Electric Lane- Attribution – the scandal of lost images on the web Marcus Winter, University of Brighton- Social Object Labels Franziska Mucha, Historisches Museum Frankfurt – Frankfurt Now! an interactive city mode
2:30-3:10		Grassroots meets technology Chair: Anra Kennedy
		Using algorithms and people to put a large radio archive on the web		Tristan Ferne, BBC Research & Development
		‘A great place: a lawless hole with rancid drinks and reckless drunks…’ Multiple voices, multiple memories: Public history-making and activist archivism in online popular music archives.		Paul Long, Birmingham Music Archive / Birmingham City University
3:10-3:40		Tea and coffee break, sponsored by Squiz
3:40-4:40		Communities and citizen history Chair: Juno Rae, Museum of London
		Crowdsourcing a Community Collection (and the After Effects)		Kate Lindsay, Alun Edwards & Ylva Berglund-Prytz, University of Oxford
		IT buddies, virtual volunteers and super-users: Building an online community for Britain from Above		Sandra Brauer, English Heritage
		Diaries of the First World War: Citizen history on the Western Front		Jim O’Donnell (Oxford University)
4.50-5.20		Closing Keynote		Michael John Gorman, Science Gallery
5:20-5:30		Wrap-up and close

BBC signs Memoranda of Understanding with Europeana, ODI, OKFN & Mozilla

The BBC has signed Memoranda of Understanding with the Europeana Foundation, the Open Data Institute, the Open Knowledge Foundation and the Mozilla Foundation to enable them to work together on common priorities including the publication of open data and the promotion of open standards in web development. This is an important step in 'mainstreaming' the role of cultural heritage organisations in publishing open data from their collections, and provides an opportunity to bring collections-related content and information to a far wider audience. For further information, see the Telegraph article on the announcement:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10472903/BBC-throws-weight-behind-open-data-movement.html?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=market+watch

MLAs interested in sharing their collections information as open data, and making it available to Europeana, should do this through the Culture Grid, which is maintained by Knowledge Integration Ltd on behalf of the Collections Trust.

Sharing data through the Culture Grid involves taking structured data and images from collections systems or accessing an online platform for direct entry. They can then be shared with Europeana via a periodic harvest. Culture Grid also provides access to a range of tools and widgets such as a collections search box generator which can be hosted on organisations' websites.

All data shared with Europeana is shared under the Europeana Data Exchange Agreement (http://pro.europeana.eu/web/guest/data-exchange-agreement), which permits Europeana to share it under a CC0 license.

Collections Trust are also currently working with a group of software providers under the SPECTRUM Partners Scheme to embed the capability to share data quickly and easily with Europeana into Collections Management Systems (as part of the Europeana Inside project - www.europeanainside.eu).

Measuring the Value of Culture

Measuring the value of culture: a report to the Department for Culture Media and Sport was written by Dr David O’Brien (Leeds Metropolitan University), who carried out a 6-month fellowship, jointly-funded by AHRC, ESRC and DCMS, from April to October 2010.

The report considers several solutions to the problem of how to value culture, giving an overview of techniques from environmental and health economics, arts and humanities research and recent studies on subjective wellbeing. Overall the report concludes that, in the context of HM Treasury’s Green Book, the economic valuation techniques supported by the Green Book should be used by the cultural sector when articulating its value to central government.

In light of this conclusion the report makes three specific recommendations for DCMS and the sector:

* DCMS, in consultation with the cultural sector, should create clear guidance on how to use the economic valuation (rather than economic impact) techniques already deployed across central government and recommended by HM Treasury.
* DCMS should develop closer links with academics working in the area of cultural economics, to use existing and future studies as best practice guidance on the use of economic valuation for the cultural sector.
* DCMS should use existing work in this area to explore the possibility of developing a multi-criteria analysis for cultural decisions, of the type recommended in DCLG’s Multi-criteria Analysis: a manual.

The report can be viewed here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/measuring-the-value-of-culture-a-report-to-the-department-for-culture-media-and-sport