Last week in links

Time again to sum up some of the links from last week that caught my eye.

First out is the successful Kickstarter campaign by Smarthistory. I’m not surpised: Kickstarter and Smarthistory are both individually great services  and ideas so the combination just couldn’t fail.  Crowdfunded and crowdsourced (nerdsourced?) art and heritage content is a combination I think we’ll see much more of in the future.

Second comes some 3D Printing links: Get yourself a 3D Printer of your own or upload your own design and have it printed for you. Do you think 3D Printing will have an effect on society? Read Cory Doctorow’s “Makers” and  think about it.

Third out is the Wikimedia Foundation’s new 5-year strategic plan. I find their thinking about mobile and off-line access especially interesting. The work to close the gender gap and entry into the Global South will be exciting challenges! Then I can’t fail to link to the Wikimedia Commons page where wikipedians have uploaded the high-resolution images of art published in the Google Art Project. It opens up questions concerning the Public Domain: should Google (or the individual museum) gain rights over its digital versions of Public Domain art? And even if you think they don’t: is it a good long-term strategy to upload images like these without consulting the museum?

Number four is the Culture Grid Hackday that I attended two weeks ago where the results are now starting to come online (find them through the Twitter stream!). Another API-centric even which is running right now is the Digital Humanities API Workshop at the Maryland Instititute of Technology. A hackday coming up is the Black Country Hackday. I think we’ll see many GLAM-hackdays this year. Perhaps one centering on a Europeana API?

Last but not least, the people behind exhibition management system Omeka have received more funding for the future and sketch out their roadmap for the next two year’s development. At Europeana we use Omeka for some of our exhibitions and some of the planned features sure could come in useful.