Conference Agenda

The journey begins and ends with The British Library. In September 2018, Mahendra Mahey, the former British Library Labs Manager and colleagues organised the first Library Labs event, Building Library Labs around the world, which was attended by 40 institutions from North America, Europe, Asia and Africa. This event was the experimental catalyst that led to the establishment of the International GLAM Labs community, a second event held at Royal Library of Denmark in Copenhagen in March 2019 and a week long booksprint in Doha, Qatar, which resulted in the Open Access book: Open a GLAM Lab. These events, together with the Collections as Data movement, went on to inspire a series of funded projects and initiatives to help organisations move from experimentation to gathering experience, such as the DATA-KBR-BE project, at the KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, to facilitate data-level access to KBR’s digitised and born-digital collections for digital humanities research; a Collections as Data checklist and subsequent workflow as part of the common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage. Such collaborations have pushed the boundaries of cultural heritage data into the realm of humanities research data, resulting in a DARIAH Position Paper and a thematic conference exploring the topic in depth, towards state-of-the-art cultural heritage analytics through the emerging Cultural Heritage Cloud, within the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). Most recently, there is a move from projects to business as usual, by understanding the importance of technological resilience and sustainability, including what lessons we can learn about building sustainable data services, when our knowledge comes under attack. The goal of this presentation is to inspire experimentation, encourage collaboration, share experiences and lessons learned, and most importantly, to keep moving - step-by-step - towards responsible (re)use of cultural heritage data and sustainable data services that remain for the long-term.

Sally Chambers is a member of the DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities Board of Directors, where she focuses on the development of sustainable services and FAIR dataset portfolios in the context of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), the common European Data Space for Cultural Heritage and the Cultural Heritage Cloud. Previously, she was Secretary-General of DARIAH-EU, based in the Göttingen Centre for Digital Humanities, Germany. In February 2015, she joined the Ghent Centre for Digital Humanities (GhentCDH) where she coordinated DARIAH activities in Flanders and Belgium. Since October 2020 Sally has divided her time between GhentCDH and KBR, Royal Library of Belgium, where she coordinates the DATA-KBR-BE project to facilitate data-level access to KBR’s digitised and born-digital collections for digital humanities research. She has been an active participant in the international Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) Labs community, and a co-author of Open a GLAM Lab. In March 2024, Sally was appointed as Head of Research Infrastructures Services at The British Library in London. She combines this role with her work as DARIAH Director.