Future GLAM: Convergence and collaboration in the cultural heritage sector
Convergence across Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (GLAM) has been the focus of much recent academic and professional debate. A challenging funding context, the potentially transformative digital environment, heightened and increasingly diverse expectations of the role of cultural heritage within society, employment mobility and insecurity, and the emergence of new organisational forms are challenging GLAM practice. This not only disrupts existing ways of working but also raises questions about the training, support, and ongoing professional development needed for those who work in the sector.
This one-day symposium, an adjunct to the Museums Australia ‘Agents of Change’ conference, aims to bring together students, emerging professionals, academics, and practitioners interested in ideas of convergence and collaboration in GLAM and cultural heritage more generally, to share their experiences and to reflect on an exciting but uncertain future. In particular we are interested in:
- How might we understand convergence and collaboration in the transformative digital environment?
- What are the exemplars?
- What might we learn from international initiatives such as the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), Europeana or the mergers of institutions and functions both in Australia and abroard?
- What are the drawbacks to convergence? What are the constraints that this might impose?
- What can different GLAM institutions learn from each other?
- What is it like to work in a converged environment?
- What new approaches to Cultural heritage – tertiary sector collaboration are there?
- What might teaching and learning, and continuing professional development look like in a converged sector?
- What support might the Cultural Heritage sector need from the tertiary sector (and vice versa) so that cultural heritage professionals can be supported as agents of change throughout their career?
Contributions may include case studies, theoretical explorations, evaluations of current practices, or presentations of arts- or web-based projects related to GLAM convergence. The symposium is being co-organised by students, faculty and practitioners, and the program will involve networking opportunities, and post-conference follow ups so that the conversations started at the symposium can continue.
Please send an abstract (250 words) and a short biography (100 words) of the speaker(s) to steven.cooke@deakin.edu.au no later than 19th March 2018.
Conference organisers
Dr Steven Cooke (Deakin University), Dr Katherine Howard (RMIT), Amelia Marra (Museums Australia (Victoria), Associate Professor Gillian Oliver (Monash University) and Dr Steven Wright (Monash University).
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