Some of the issues facing the GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) sector in Australia getting digital content up online and freely available got aired last week at the GLAM Wiki seminar held at the Australian War Memorial Museum in Canberra. Strikes this pixie that the comfort of the wide avenues and streets of the location of the seminar rather reflected the expected ease with which GLAM-our queens wish to glide along to get collections online. It is understandable really, life is much easier when the roads are all built and you have a good car to drive, air-conditioning and clement weather. Your hair doesn't get mussed and you arrive looking good enough for a photo-shoot.
The hard bitten truth of the matter is - it is not easy and it never will be - to get content up online - but - it will get slightly easier as long as the community keeps these issues on the agenda and works through issues and we give each other support. It is an old-fashioned term "capacity building" - a term which describes, in the case of the cultural sector in particular or the humanities in general, what these sectors require.
The GLAM sector like the digital humanities domain requires an injection of investment to jump-start the ability to operate online. Much of the discussion at the high levels (read: NCRIS) seems to settle upon the funding of infrastructure (technical) in eResearch realms in Australia. It is as if somehow magically all domains will conform and behave like the hard sciences, i.e. self-organised, well-established in the digital realm, high usage of technology, with high levels of computer literacy and a "problem" to be solved. Please note, these are not "qualities" that can readily be attributed to the humanities sector. Does beg the question.... was a needs analysis ever done to ascertain what it would take to get the different domains (science, arts, social sciences and humanities) piping content online to drive the Australian economy forward?
How odd it is that New Zealand has a digital content strategy (see DigitalNZ) and Australia doesn't. Hasn't anyone noticed this or were they too busy investigating infrastructure and constructing competitive funding rounds or worrying about the state of the roads and their hair? Ah yes - Warwick Cathro from National Library of Australia has noticed it and written about it: "New Zealand has developed a Digital Content Strategy which proposes a nationwide digitization programme based on key local, regional and national content. Australia is yet to develop a similar policy and funding framework.". A digital content strategy for Australia would not be glamourous at all. In fact capacity building is thoroughly plain... plain and yet absolutely necessary. It is a bit like getting a decent haircut really - any styling or primping afterwards is sheer frivolity and the stuff of powderpuff dreams.
Yes I'm being somewhat tart about this....'scuse the pun. Before too many GLAM-our pusses get too glum... I say reach for your snazzy designer sunglasses... tie your hair back and get stuck in. Even Jackie O had to wait for her moment in the sun - but behind that smile was, I suspect, a woman of great tenacity and forbearance.
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