The announcement of a new initiative, Open Lab Workshop, focused on GLAM (galleries, libraries, museums, and archives) that is being led by Michael Edson at the National Endowment for the Humanities, who showed such leadership on many of these issues in his previous post at the Smithsonian, got me thinking about this presentation, which I gave at an O’Reilly Ignite series at the MIT Media Lab three and a half years ago.

Unfortunately, my observations in this talk are just as relevant today as they were in the spring of 2012.

The organization is hosting an unconference and Ignite talks on December 1 in Washington, followed by an invitation-only meeting that is no longer accepting participants.

It will be interesting to see what comes out of their effort.

There are an impressive list of organizations participating in the December 1 open meeting:

American Alliance of Museums
American Council for Learned Societies
American Library Association Center for the Future of Libraries
American Museum of Natural History
Anacostia Community Museum
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Architect of the Capitol
ArchivesNext
Association of Research Libraries
Austrian National Library
Balboa Park Online Collaborative
Baltimore Heritage
Baltimore Museum of Art
Capitol Visitor Center
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Innovation Studio
Center for History and New Media
Center for the Future of Museums
Central Connecticut State University
Chicago History Museum
CodedCulture
Council of Independent Colleges
Council on Library and Information Resources
Data & Society
DC Public Library
DC Public Library Foundation
DC Public Library, Special Collections
Digital Library Federation
Digital Public Library of America
Do Space
EPAM Systems
Europeana
Ford’s Theatre
George Mason University
George Washington University Libraries
George Washington University Museum Studies
Georgetown University
GW Libraries
Historypin
House of Representatives, Office of Art and Archives
Innovation Studio at Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh
Institute for American Indian Studies Museum
International Spy Museum
Johns Hopkins University
King’s College London
Library of Congress
Longwood Gardens
MacArthur Foundation
Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities
Metropolitan New York Library Council
Michelle Smith Collaboratory for Visual Culture, University of Maryland, College Park
Minnesota Historical Society
Museum of Impact
Museums and the Web
National Archives and Records Administration
National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy
National Endowment for the Humanities
National Gallery of Art
National Library of Medicine
National Museum of African Art
New York Public Library
NHPRC, National Archives
National Historical Publications & Records Commission, National Archives
Oculus Digital
Office of the Historian, U.S. House of Representatives
Open Knowledge Foundation
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media
Smarthistory
Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access
Society of American Archivists
Sunlight Foundation
The Extroverted Museum Initiative
Tulane University, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library
U.S. Capitol, Visitor Center
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
United States Senate Historical Office
University of Delaware
University of Maryland
University of Maryland Libraries
University of Virginia
Virginia Department of Historic Resources
2040 Digital

This is the list on the site today.  It doesn’t appear that the National Council on Public History, the American Association for State and Local History, and the Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums are involved, or that individuals from those organizations are attending.

According to the wiki, these are the organizations that have taken the lead in this effort:

The Openlab Workshop is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities Office of Digital Humanities and Division of Public Programs in a cooperative agreement with The Council on Library and Information Resources.

Workshop organizers and co-conveners are the American Alliance of Museums Center for the Future of Museums, The American Library Association Center for the Future of Libraries, The Digital Public Library of America, the Digital Library Federation, the Metropolitan New York Library Council, and [new] the Society of American Archivists

Workshop partners support the Openlab Workshop through leadership, participation, and/or financial support for the Unconference and Ignite talks: Balboa Park Online Collaborative, The Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh Innovation Studio, Data & Society, Europeana, Historypin, Smarthistory, U.S. Capitol Visitors Center