Welcome to episode 22 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, we hear from Antje Schmidt, Head of Digital Strategy at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg (MK&G), and has worked with digital cultural heritage for 15 years. Her work focuses on making museum collections more accessible, reusable, and relevant to different audiences and machines. In 2015, with the launch of the first collection online, she established an open access policy at the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg – the first one in a German art museum and the core of the ever evolving digital strategy of the museum.

Antje responds to the following questions: 

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Episodes will be released twice a week until June 2022. Missed episode 21 of our Open Culture VOICES series? Catch up here >>