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Allowing for Depreciation: GLAM Sector Collaboration and Convergence

by Paul Bentley

 

Article originally published in Online Currents February 2016 and reprinted with kind permission of Thomson Reuters.

 


Source: Labor Advocate Online http://www.kclabor.org

When you pick up your iPad to take in the morning news one thing is clear. The media have become the medium. Newspapers have embedded video clips. Journalists write their words in the morning press before appearing on television to talk about what they have written. “For more information, go to the website,” the TV anchor says, “and add your comments.”  

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums have also been navigating the transformative digital environment. Online Currents reflected on the situation in 2009, when the Collections Council of Australia was preparing the GLAM sector for a collaborative digital future. [1] At the beginning of the year, we reported speculation by high profile commentators that the era of letting a thousand flowers bloom may be over. Effective concerted action may have become a necessity. [2] What is driving these thoughts? How real is the imperative? And what is needed in Australia for future GLAM sector success?

COLLABORATIVE ECONOMIES

As technology continues to drive changes, economic forces will draw new formations out of old silos. After decades of talk about incubation of information, knowledge and digital economies, the new phrase is the collaborative economy.

The World Economic Forum, with the help of the Boston Consulting Group, has thought about infrastructure needs. The digital economy, which in 2010 contributed US$2.3 trillion to GDP in the G20 countries, is expected to reach US$6.6 trillion a year by 2020. Long-term solutions will involve, among other things, the development of comprehensive country-level digital agendas. [3] Deloitte Access Economics has put a value of A$46 billion on the Australian collaborative economy. Companies that actively encourage collaboration, it claims, are twice as likely to be profitable. [4] Academics Leith Campbell and Sascha Suessspeck estimate the rollout of the National Broadband Network alone will boost Australia's GDP by 2%.[5]

The raw figures are counter-balanced by cautionary notes. The UK research organisation Nesta says we need to look at evidence on the collaborative economy before jumping to conclusions. Little is known about the effect it will actually have. A triple bottom line is needed to simultaneously measure economic, environmental and social impact. Good intentions don’t necessarily make for positive outcomes. [6]

There are competing views about the nature of the collaborative economy, one centred on technology, the other on people. [7] Alex Hern thinks the “sharing economy” is a meaningless term coined because of the tech industry’s desire to pretend everything it does is new and groundbreaking. [8] Nick Milton reminds us that the innovation spectrum consists of negative and positive elements, including meddling, re-inventing, tinkering, innovating and improving. Innovation in the wrong context is "re-inventing the wheel". Re-using knowledge in the wrong context is "flogging a dead horse". [9]  

Craig Thomler suggests that, while transformational innovation calls for radical thinking and a shake-up, incremental innovation is valuable.[10] Dion Hinchcliffe says we are still in the crawling stages of collaboration, which is a messy and sometimes frustrating activity. Collaboration is not synonymous with communication; the process of transformation is stymied by piecemeal approaches. [11] Clay Shirky adds punch by asserting good collaboration is a matter of structured fighting: good results depend on how the fighting is structured. [12] Rhett Allain, in Wired, shows how inertia can affect the result if you apply the same force to two different objects. [13]

THE AUSTRALIAN GLAM SECTOR

The Australian GLAM sector, as NSW State Librarian Alex Byrne observed in 2010, operates within a federal system of governments and is supported by low levels of government and philanthropic support compared with some other countries. The national institutions have lacked the authority to direct state and local institutions. The Australian Bibliographic Network, established in 1981, exemplified the inclination of Australian libraries for collaboration. Australian’s libraries, archives and museums have gained an international reputation as early adopters and innovators. At the beginning of the 21st century, he wrote, competitiveness inherent in a federal system of governments had been largely replaced by cooperation and degree of convergence, as expressed through the organisations such as the Collections Council of Australia. [14]  

The Collections Council of Australia (CCA) in 2004 had emerged from the Keating Government’s Creative Nation policy and subsequent government attempts to stimulate GLAM sector collaboration. [15] The CCA pursued worthwhile initiatives, including a collections hub pilot in regional Australia and the development of an Australian Framework for Digital Heritage Collections to guide future developments across the domains. Although the CCA had the right representatives on its board, it had limited funding and authority. When the Rudd Government without explanation removed its funding in 2009, the board opted to close it down in 2010. In hindsight, the decision of the Climate Commission -- which continued as the Climate Council after the Abbott government withdrew funding for the Commission in 2013 – may have been a wiser course.

After the perplexing decision of the Rudd Government turned into hide-and-seek games under the Abbott Government, things are changing again under Malcolm Turnbull. The arts and collections portfolio is once again linked to the Department of Communications, which has responsibility for broadband infrastructure and the digital economy.

The coordinating body for inter-government arts portfolios, the Cultural Ministers Council, closed down by the Rudd Government, in 2011 emerged phoenix-like in the form of the Meeting of Cultural Ministers (http://mcm. arts.gov.au). A National Arts and Culture Accord Working Group is developing policies on regional arts, digital technologies, cultural infrastructure, and indigenous arts and culture. [16] A report on a GLAM sector digital technology strategy, published in May 2015, makes 15 wide-ranging recommendations without settling on a quick fix. [17] 

The agendas of the GLAM sector silos are being advanced by various professional bodies, particularly those with control over most of the money.

National and State Libraries Australasia (http://www.nsla.org.au/) is the most active and visible. One report, Faster Access to Archival Collections in NSLA Libraries by Mary-Louise Ayres in 2010, still resonates on disparities within NSLA libraries. Sorcerer’s apprentice pressures in managing analogue and digital material carry productivity questions calling for answers. [18] The Council of Australian University Librarians (http://www.caul.edu.au/) focuses its collaborative efforts on programs to assist its field of vision, higher education research and learning.  

The collaborative centrepiece of the Council of Australasian Archives and Records Authorities (CAARA, http://www.caara.org.au/) has been the Australasian Digital Recordkeeping Initiative, which may be under review. The Council of Australasian Museum Directors (CAMD, http://camd.org.au/) has been involved in two online collaborative efforts. The Atlas of Living Australia (http://www.ala.org.au/) is the Australian node of the Global Biodiversity Information Facility. The Museum Metadata Exchange project (http://museumex.org/), with substantial funding from the Australian National Data Service and in partnership with Museums Australia (http://www.museumsaustralia.org.au), brought into a single space over 1,000 museum collection descriptions. But it ran out of steam after the funding ran out. Addressing museum data management and system problems awaits another day.

Three other museum sector collaborations are worth mentioning. The Field Guides to Australian Fauna apps (http://museumvictoria.com.au/national-apps), released in 2014, involved a collaboration of 7 museums and over 180 people. The Biodiversity Heritage Library (http://biodiversitylibrary.org/) is a global network of country nodes operating in ways that suit local circumstances. [19] A collaborative enterprise that no longer exists is the Collections Australia Network (http://www.collectionsaustralia.net.au/), which also had its funding removed without explanation under the Rudd Government. Its web pages and information resources have been archived or adopted by other organisations, but the status of its most important element, a database of collection holdings, is unclear. It may be another example of how lack of government funding is sometimes accompanied by lack of GLAM sector willpower or wherewithal.  

Trove is the flagship Australian platform. Online Currents mentioned three papers at the ALIA Information Online 2015 conference highlighting its limited funding, imperfections and capacity to harvest data from types of contributors who were once excluded. [20] Mary-Louise Ayres, in her conference paper, compared Trove with the governance and funding arrangements for its overseas counterparts, Europeana, Digital Public Library of America and DigitalNZ. “Only time will tell whether the next five years brings further convergence, or further divergence – and whether new players will change the aggregator environment in ways not yet imaginable.” [21]

The state of Victoria has an enviable record of seizing opportunities.

Under the leadership of Arts Victoria, five institutions -- the Arts Centre Melbourne, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Museum Victoria, National Gallery of Victoria, and State Library of Victoria -- joined up in 2003 to develop the Culture Victoria Network website (http://www.cv.vic.gov.au) and improve access to Victoria’s major cultural collections. The project has links to the Victorian schools intranet (VicSmart) and Australia’s Academic and Research Network (AARNet) and now supports Victorian Collections, a project that manages a portal and services to smaller collections across Victoria. Victorian Collections (http://victoriancollections.net.au/), also now has a partnership with the National Library of Australia for its records to be harvested by Trove. According to Eleanor Whitworth, the Culture Victoria initiative has led to strategic benefits and efficiencies and has placed the cross-domain partners in a position to take advantage of future collaborative opportunities. [22]

The State Library of Queensland’s Distributed Collection of Queensland Memory (http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/about-us/projects-and-partnerships/distributed-collection-of-queensland-memory) is another example of a state-based project that encourages contributions from diverse organisations.

In 2014, CSIRO produced the GLAM Innovation Study, which examined opportunities and challenges for the sector created by broadband and digital services. According to the report, the GLAM sector in Australia spends approximately $2.5 billion, around 80% of which is provided by local, state and federal governments. Initiatives tend to be isolated, episodic and difficult to sustain in the long term. Only a few Australian organisations, it claims, have made fundamental changes to their planning, structures and operations to place innovation and digital services at the centre of their activities.

The sector, it suggests, should consider creating a charitable foundation to support cross-sector strategic initiatives along the lines of Europeana, the Public Catalogue Foundation of the UK and the Digital Public Library of America. Despite solid collaboration within each domain, there was no formal gathering of leaders or practitioners across the GLAM sector. It made 3 recommendations aimed at “deep transformation”, involving among other things, the establishment of a national framework for collaboration to improve access to Australia’s distributed national collection, and setting up a national leadership and collaboration forum. [23]

Following its release, two GLAM sector digital access meetings were held in tandem with NSLA meetings in June and July 2015. A third meeting was held at the National Library of Australia in October 2015.

CHANGE AGENTS AND PLATFORMS

If there is more to do, what can we learn by looking elsewhere?

Major international professional bodies promote ideas and facilitate collaboration, but they have limited impact on developments. The International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) hosts a group called Libraries, Archives, Museums, Monuments and Sites (LAMMS) to intensify cooperation between IFLA, International Council of Archives (ICA), International Council of Museums (ICOM), (International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and the Coordinating Council of Audio-visual Archives Associations (CCAAA)). LAMMS supports the ENUMERATE project, which works to gather cultural heritage statistics. IFLA has published a report on GLAM sector collaboration and cooperation and urges the sector to find new ways to defying physical boundaries, delivering information, collaborating over heritage information, and pursuing new joint-use facilities. [24]

More can be learnt from the way countries invest in agents of change and online platforms.

The United States has built its efforts on the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), established in 2000 and led by the Library of Congress. Its experience underscored issues for the unwary. Relationship between public and private enterprises were not always interoperable. Even within the same domain, there were barriers to collaboration. Metadata in an institutional context were not easily transferable to a larger context. Long term preservation had more to do with managing data than developing systems. A single tool may not be the answer. [25] The program continues as the Digital Preservation Program (http://www.digitalpreservation.gov). The Library of Congress has launched a National Digital Stewardship Alliance (http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/) to extend the work of the NDIIPP.  

The major government-funded agent of change in the United States is the Institute of Museum and Library Studies (IMLS, http://www.imls.gov). With a staff of 65 it serves a population of 320 million. Out of a budget of US$228 million in 2015, less than 10 percent is earmarked for administration and research and the rest is distributed in the form of grants to support a range of projects including cross-sectoral collaboration. These figures are important when you reach the end of the article.

A recipient of IMLS grants is the Digital Public Library of American (DPLA http://dp.la), launched in 2013. In 2014, the DPLA received nearly US$1 million to expand the DPLA infrastructure of hubs to provide services in professional development, digitisation, metadata creation or aggregation across the United States. [26] Based in Boston, the DPLA is also supported financially by a long list of other foundations and government agencies.

Following a GLAM sector workshop in April 2015, IMLS has also allocated funds to establish the National Digital Platform for Libraries and Museums. The workshop of GLAM sector leaders had concluded that, although major strides had been made to form a decentralized ecosystem of memory institutions, the components were diffuse and largely disconnected. There was an urgent need to make the connections, harness local initiative, develop plug-in mechanisms and provide a portfolio of organisations to deliver services. There was a need for easy-to-use tools to enable batch processing, support crowd-sourced data, allow integration with existing systems, encourage contributions by third-party developers and advance work on linked data and computational solutions. Solutions must stimulate radical collaborations involving state libraries as administrative agencies. IMLS awarded a number of grants for the project in 2015. An increase in targeted funding of nearly US$9 million is anticipated in 2016. After more than twenty years of incremental advancement, a report on the project says “the time for radical, systemic collaboration has finally arrived. [27]

Other bodies in the United States have played sheep dog roles in leading sectors into collaborative online possibilities. OCLC, the manager of WorldCat, has been prominent among them, as indicated by the well-known reports Beyond the Silos of the LAMs: Collaboration Among Libraries, Archives and Museums and Single Search: The Quest for the Holy Grail. [28] A recent report, Stewardship of the Evolving Scholarly Record, on a cross-Atlantic collaboration with Research Libraries UK, focuses on the higher education landscape, but its subtitle, From the Invisible Hand to Conscious Coordination, points to an idea gaining wider currency. [29] The Coalition of Networked Information has also been important in leading its members to the water over the past 25 years. 

In the United Kingdom, the cross-sectoral change agent was the Museums Libraries Archives Council. Although it experienced the same fate as the Collections Council in Australia, at least its responsibilities in 2010 were transferred to the Arts Council England (ACE, http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/).  At ACE, the interests of museums and libraries are bundled in with the arts and culture, but responsibility for archives has been transferred to the National Archives (www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/archives-sector). Other change agents and platform providers in narrower fields include Jisc (https://www.jisc.ac.uk) and Research Libraries UK (RLUK, http://www.rluk.ac.uk/). RLUK in a recent report characterised today’s environment as a “perfect storm” that requires a reappraisal of investment and innovation needs. [30] The Digital Preservation Coalition (http://www.dpconline.org/) works toward more productive collaboration within and beyond the high profile members of the Coalition.

The Europeana portal (http://www.europeana.eu/portal/), with funding from the European Commission, was launched in 2008 and now acts as an interface to material in more than 2,000 institutions across Europe. Digital objects are not stored on a central computer, but remain with the cultural institutions. Different types of cataloguing records are mapped to a single common standard, the Europeana Semantic Elements, which takes a lowest common denominator approach in representing different types of digital content. Based in the national library of the Netherlands, a great number of digital projects are run by different institutions -- digitising archaeological monuments and buildings in 3D, aggregation of museum content, digitising contemporary art, the performing arts, digitising photographs from news agencies, projects relating to the First World War, royal manuscripts, travel and tourism, television material, social history, Jewish cultural heritage, linked data, musical instruments, natural history, and aggregation from national libraries to name just a few. Europeana has released a new report which looks at how partners’ motivation, technical requirements and content affect overall metadata quality. [31]

MERGERS AND ATTITUDES

Some countries have tackled the idea of merging national and regional institutions.   

Canada took the bull by the horns in 2004 when it merged two national institutions to form Library and Archives Canada. In 2008 Greg Bac and Pam Armstrong were upbeat about progress. A federated search system had been launched and the development of a Trusted Digital Repository was underway to ingest, preserve, and disseminate services for archives and library collections. The move had created synergies between the two services, led to efficiencies and satisfied user demands for seamless access to all holdings. [32] In 2015, the Canadian Auditor General reported shortcomings, particularly in relation to the management of public records. LAC had spent over US$15 million on a digital repository that was never used. There were cries of "total mismanagement." [33] Mismanagement, if that is what it was, does not of course disapprove the case for institutional mergers.

Across the sea in Ireland, a government proposal in 2012 to appoint a single council to manage the National Library, National Museum, and National Archives met with protestations. The move would affect arm’s length governance of the institutions. It would impair their ability to raise funds and their ability to deliver on their statutory obligations. There was a case for investigating savings from shared services such as HR, finance, storage, security and support services, but the rationale for a merger met with scepticism from those working in the institutions. Although the Minister, Mr Deenihan, wasn’t convinced by the arguments opposing the move, the plan was put into the too-hard basket. [34]

At a meeting on convergence by the Australian Society of Archivists NSW Branch in February 2013, the Director General of the National Library of Australia Anne-Marie Schwirtlich said she had not been persuaded by the arguments to merge major institutions, based on the experiences of Canada, Singapore, the Netherlands, Tasmania, and Ireland. Although joint digital strategies are justified, other strategies are flawed. Separate missions, she said are not an impediment to effectiveness, but politicians with an interest in budget savings will always need to be persuaded. We need to work together more successfully. Speaking from the floor, Chris Hurley argued for a need to unpack libraries and archives, to look at functions not buildings.

Others who have looked at the question of mergers have come to the conclusion that success is more likely at local government level. Lise Summers in 2014, reflecting on a possible merger of the State Records and State Library in South Australia, pointed to a 1994 Commission on Government review in Western Australia, which was not convinced by a proposed merger of the library and records management institutions in that state. [35] Leith Robinson, in a PhD thesis, came to the same conclusion: physical convergence is particularly appropriate at the local level, with libraries as the anchor of a community hub. [36]

Within the minds of GLAM sector practitioners, there is sometimes confusion about what convergence actually means. The question of merging institutions is lumped in with the need to simplify ways of finding information. Possibilities for information engineering on a grand scale are sometimes overlooked. Ways of doing things in the silos are treated as rocket science that no one else is capable of grasping.  

Language helps and hinders the muddy debates. The term ‘memory institution’ has been used to create the semblance of compatibility across their activities, but it obscures and oversimplifies fundamental differences in the way libraries, archives and museums acquire, record and interpret their collections. [37] The convergence debate “has been awash in business-influenced jargon”; people at the coal face must “oppose corporatized convergence and build an alternative model based on the very principles espoused by our professions” [38]

Tina Amirtha reminds us in her piece The Trouble with Digitizing History that ideas about   digitisation could lead us in the wrong direction. Allocating lots of funds on mass digitisation projects may not be money well spent. Giant leaps of innovation will come from refining the methods used for preserving born digital files as the media memory spills increasingly outside traditional repositories. [39]

Fears need to be assuaged, as the UK Collections Trust was compelled to do to ease concerns from museum bodies about an amendment to the European Commission's directive encouraging public sector bodies to make their digital content openly available. [40]

Jennifer Trant has written that emerging similarities in on-line activities are not yet evident in the education of professionals who work in libraries, archives and museums. New interdisciplinary training needs to be developed across the sector in a way that respects the distinct histories, cultural roles and responsibilities of libraries, archives and museums. [41] 

THE CRUX OF THE MATTER

Paul Marty gets to the point about transcending traditional boundaries. Digital convergence does not necessarily mean institutions are becoming the same thing or that there is a need to physically merge their collections and their professional responsibilities. Cultural heritage professionals need to maintain key distinctions at the back end, while making information access more universal and more transparent at the front end. We need to stop wasting time, set aside minor differences and work together. [42]

There has been a tendency to ignore strategic information approaches to overcome feudal data management practices within institutions and in at least some GLAM sector standards.

The point is underscored by Mike Jones in his article Artefacts and Archives: Considering Cross-Collection Knowledge Networks in Museums. He writes about the disconnection of museum collection management systems and records management systems within and across museums, drawing on the experience of Museum Victoria, the Smithsonian, the Donald Thomson collection, the Spencer & Gillen project, and the American Museum of Natural History. Where archival and museum systems are brought together, as with the Smithsonian, the effect is comparable to interleaved catalogues for separate collections. Uncovering relationships between them is left up to the user. Moving from theory to practice will be a significant task and the development of a conceptual model to ensure the whole does not become an unmanageable tangle of data. [43]

David Henry and Eric Brown have tackled much the same issue at the Missouri History Museum, where experiments with semantic web technologies and standards -- Resource Description Framework (RDF), the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL), and an XML mapping language -- have been used to support cross-collection searching. However, searching at http://collections.mohistory.org/search/ still has its limitations. The biggest challenge of future work will be to provide an interface that allows users to make meaningful connections without overwhelming the user with too much information and too much complexity. Although some argue the semantic web is still a long way off, there is value in RDF as a leveraging mechanism. [44] Thomas Baker, from Dublin Core, explores RDF for compatibility with linked data approaches by defining constraints as a way of not compromising underlying vocabularies in the wider linked data environment. [45] 

The British Museum’s Dominic Oldman and European colleagues say the system is broken and we need to start again. In Realizing Lessons of the Last 20 Years: A Manifesto for Data Provisioning and Aggregation Services for the Digital Humanities, they look at data management based on experience with the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC CRM), an international standard for controlling the exchange of cultural heritage information. The standard was developed by ICOM’s International Committee for Documentation and,  while it solves the problem of delivering semantically rich data integration, the achievement can be undermined by a lack of properly managed processes and working relationships between data providers and aggregators. Ambitious aggregation projects have failed to provide infrastructures onto which GLAM sector communities can build. [46]

They flesh out a picture of dysfunctional elements. New projects seem intent on replicating flawed approaches and repeating the mistakes of the past. Museums spend vast amounts for intensive handcrafted content on their websites at the expense of other needs. Digital representation of cultural heritage information is determined by those who understand it least. All current mapping tools basically fail in one way or another to support industrial level integration.

They assert the cultural heritage linked data movement provides new examples of this damaging situation. Far from providing meaningful linking of data, the lack of a properly designed model has thwarted progress.  

The history of digital humanities, they say, is now littered by hundreds of projects that are "bursts of optimism". We need to change the emphasis from the inconsistent 'bursts' and instead focus on the underlying structures. The provision of data for integrated systems must be based on a distributed system of processes in which data providers are an integral part, not a simple and mechanical view of information system aggregation, regardless of the complexity of data models. We need a more coherent and robust vision. We need a new architecture and reference model called Synergy. [47]

The American librarian and consultant Karen Coyle points to the need for fresh thinking in reflections on the development and adoption of the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR). Although technology solutions can and have been developed around the FRBR conceptual model, no technology solution is presented in the FRBR Final Report. Interoperability needs to take place around the information and meaning carried in the bibliographic description, not in the structure that carries the data. [48]

Meanwhile, the work on linked data continues. Brighid Gonzales touches on the BIBFRAME Initiative as the possible framework to link library resources with the web, while noting theories behind linked data and the Semantic Web are still in the process of being drawn out. [49]

OCLC in September 2015 announced that it is working with seven major libraries, including the Library of Congress, on the Person Entity Lookup Pilot, to learn more about how linked data will influence library workflows and reduce redundant data by linking related sets of person identifiers and authorities. [50] Roy Tennant reports that OCLC is working with W3C Community Group to extend the vocabulary of Schema.org for use within the library world. “Rather than being a metadata backwater as we have been since time immemorial, where no one but librarians understand our metadata, we are now embedding our descriptions of cultural heritage resources directly into the web itself.” [51]

DigitalNZ, as an experiment, has released a linked data API which focuses on linking people and their works from National Library of New Zealand, Alexander Turnbull Library, Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, Auckland Art Gallery and Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand. [52]

THREE LOCAL POSSIBILITIES

Three commentators provide final notes of wisdom.

The former director of the Institute of Museum and Library Studies, Robert Martin: “Networked digital information technology has simply lifted the veil that has obscured the basic fact that the silos into which libraries, museums, archives, broadcasters, and other  developers  and  purveyors  of  learning  resources  and  opportunities  have  been relegated are ghettos of our own making.” [53]

American CIO and academic Jerry Campbell, in a paper about portals to the Association of Research Libraries: “Letting a thousand flowers bloom, it turns out has always been easier than cultivating a garden”. [54]

David Bearman, in an article awarded the W Kaye Lamb Prize for its exceptional combination of research, reflection, and writing: “the future will be about agreed objectives rather than ideologically correct premises” [55]

The idea of silos is partly a myth. Galleries aren’t just galleries. Libraries aren’t just libraries. Archives aren’t just archives. And museums aren’t just museums. The oldest museum in the world was the library of Alexandria. Curator Hans Ulrich Obrist asserts that in the twenty-first century “the architectural and artistic contributions that are going to endure are not only the ones with a built and physical form.” [56]

Merging institutions, like merging companies, will always depend on a business case which either makes the case or doesn’t. Taking the GLAM sector into the future will require leadership as well as participation. The old patchwork may stand them in good stead.  

Three possibilities may be worth considering.

First, resurrect the Collections Council. Corral its funding from the arts and cultural pool, where the GLAM sector is sometimes drowned. Use the IMLS example of a dollar per head of population as the basis of a $20 million budget from the Australian Government. Get rid of the strategic clutter. Distribute 90 percent of the funding on the basis of identified strategic imperatives and the merits of grant applications from GLAM sector bidders.  

A move in this direction was triggered by decisions in the 2015 Federal budget when the government shaved more than $100 million from the Australia Council’s budget and moved it to the National Excellence in the Arts Program within the Ministry for the Arts. The ensuing rhetoric in the debate underscored the difficulties of making sense of cultural heritage spending in an arts pool. In November 2015, the new minister for the Arts announced a new name –Catalyst -- for the NEAP, the retention of $12 million to be dispersed under the program and the return of a substantial portion to the Australia Council.  

Museums Australia, in a media release, welcomed the changes because it opened up the possibility of funding to small and medium museums and galleries, which had previously been excluded from Australia Council funding. It remains to be seen whether government policy on this front will turn out to be a catalyst or a whirlpool.

Second, make the most of Trove (as one of several important platforms). Allocate additional funds from the Collections Council pot. Establish new governance arrangements with state libraries. Leverage the existing responsibilities of state libraries for public libraries across their state. Make sure training is factored in.

Third, persuade individual institutions, including volunteer organisations, to include in their budgets or priorities an allowance for spending on converged necessities in the same way that future capital expenditure and infrastructure renewal is factored in as company depreciation.

Allow for depreciation as a way of preparing for a converging future.

Endnotes

[1] Bentley P, “The Digital Economy Dance: Getting Into Step with Government Policy” (2009) 23 OLC 1 at 13; Bentley P, “Getting in the Game of Creative Collaboration; The ALIA Information Online Conference 2009” (2009) 23 OLC 2 at 63.

[2] Bentley P, “Finding the Edge: The ALIA Information Online Conference 2015” (2015) 19 OLC 2 at 67

[3] World Economic Forum, Expanding Participation and Boosting Growth: the Infrastructure Needs of the Digital Economy 14 March 2015 http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEFUSA_DigitalInfrastructure_Report2015.pdf

[4] Deloitte Access Economics, The collaborative economy, 14 July 2014 https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/au/Documents/finance/deloitte-au-dae-collaborative-economy-google-report-2014.pdf

[5] Campbell L, Seussspeck S, “How the NBN Could Boost Australia’s GDP by 2%”, The Conversation, 8 October 2015 http://theconversation.com/how-the-nbn-could-boost-australias-gdp-by-2-48587

[6] Stokes J, Clarence E, Anderson L, Rinne A, Making Sense of the UK Collaborative Economy, Nesta, September 2014 http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/making-sense-uk-collaborative-economy and related blogs, Nesta, 2 September 2014-19 January 2015

[7] Morgan B, “Two Visions of the 'New Economy' Collide Where People and Technology Intersect” The Conversation 21 September 2015
https://theconversation.com/two-visions-of-the-new-economy-collide-where-people-and-technology-intersect-47039

[8] Kessler S, “The ‘Sharing Economy’ Is Dead, And We Killed It”, Fast Company 14 September 2015 http://www.fastcompany.com/3050775/the-sharing-economy-is-dead-and-we-killed-it; Hern A, “Why the term 'sharing economy' needs to die”, The Guardian, 5 October 2015
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/05/why-the-term-sharing-economy-needs-to-die

[9] Milton N, “The Innovation Spectrum”, Knoco stories, 4 September 2015, http://www.nickmilton.com/2015/09/the-innovation-spectrum.html

[10] Thomlin C, “Innovation Requires Innovators, Not Silver Bullet Processes & Superstar Visionaries”, eGov Au, 8 September 2015, http://egovau.blogspot.com/2015/09/innovation-requires-innovators-not.html.

[11] Hinchcliffe D, “How Much Can Technology Actually Improve Collaboration?” Zdnet,  27 April 2015 http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-much-can-technology-actually-improve-collaboration/; Hinchcliffe D, “How Leaders Can Address the Challenges of Digital Transformation”  On Digital Strategy, 15 January 2015,
http://dionhinchcliffe.com/2015/01/16/how-leaders-can-address-the-challenges-of-digital-transformation/

[12] BorckMeier J, “Clay Shirky Says Good Collaboration is Structured Fighting”, Readwrite 19 August 2011 http://www.readwriteweb.com/hack/2011/08/clay-shirky-says-good-collabor.php .

[13] Allain R, “A Simple Physics Project That’ll Show You How Inertia Works”, Wired, 29 September 2015
http://www.wired.com/2015/09/simple-physics-project-thatll-show-inertia-works/

[14] Byrne A, “Australia: Libraries, Archives and Museums” (Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, 3rd ed, Bates MJ, editor-in-chief; Maack MN, associate editor, Boca Raton, CRC Press, 2010: p392-407)

[15] Bentley, n 2

[16] Meeting of Cultural Ministers http://mcm.arts.gov.au/work-mcm

[17] Peacock D, National Arts and Culture Accord: Digital Technology Strategy Final Report, Sociable Technology, May 2015 http://www.caul.edu.au/content/upload/files/gov-inqu/dig-technologies2015report.pdf

[18] Ayres ML, Faster Access to Archival Collections in NSLA Libraries, NSLA October 2010, http://www.nsla.org.au/publication/report-faster-access-archival-collections-nsla-libraries

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