Dear EADH folks,

(Apologies for cross posting, and I hope this is of interest to the list, given many of you work in/with the GLAM sector).

Google Arts and Culture (GA&C) is now a major portal through which users can experience artworks and cultural artifacts from over 2000 galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), from over 80 countries, worldwide. While the portal attracts large audiences, there has been next-to-no published research on the GLAM sector experience of GA&C. What is attractive about the platform to institutions? What benefits does it provide to the partner organisation? What was the experience of preparing and submitting material to GA&C? What issues are there regarding labour, permissions, copyright, and sustainability? What lasting effects will it have on the sector?

We’re undertaking a study regarding the GLAM sector’s experience of GA&C, and perceptions of GA&C. We’re looking for those working within the sector to provide their anonymous opinion. We are asking for anonymous responses to give anyone in the GLAM sector freedom to comment. The survey will close on 15th Feb 2021.

Take the survey: https://edinburgh.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/google-arts-and-culture-the-glam-sector-experience-survey
(We’re aware that there are some issues with this in Chrome, but it works in other browsers).

The survey should take 20 minutes, and we’ll write the results up into an academic article, which will be a follow up to our recently published paper "Digital cultural colonialism: measuring bias in aggregated digitized content held in Google Arts and Culture”
(For an overview, see https://melissaterras.org/2021/01/18/new-paper-digital-cultural-colonialism-measuring-bias-in-aggregated-digitized-content-held-in-google-arts-and-culture/)

I would appreciate if you could share this with colleagues, and we’d really appreciate hearing your thoughts and insights.

Thank you!

Melissa

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Professor Melissa Terras
University of Edinburgh, College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
@melissaterras

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.