In late September 2019, a group of sixteen international digital cultural heritage specialists (including Collab’s own Dr Kristy Kokegei) gathered in Doha, in the State of Qatar. Our task: to collectively write a book in five days! A book that we hoped would capture the pioneering spirit of Labs and the pride we have in contributing to this growing movement of Gallery Library Archives and Museum Labs around the world. In keeping with the collaborative and experimental nature of Labs, the book was innovative in its construction and open in its licensing (public domain).

The book, Open a GLAM Lab,  has been inspired by the International GLAM Labs Community that was born in 2018 at the event on global ‘Library Labs’ held by the British Library. The event was attended by over 70 people from 43 institutions and 20 countries and followed up by a second global GLAM Labs meeting at the Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen in Spring 2019. The third international Labs meeting is due to be held at the Library of Congress in Washington DC in May 2020.  The community has now grown to 250 people, from more than 60 institutions, in over 30 countries.

Read Kristy’s blog post about the community and the book.