British Library's Open and Engaged 2025 Conference
Day 3 begins with a panel on Access to GLAM Research, featuring UK cultural heritage organisations showcasing their repository services and strategies. Speakers will discuss how repositories serve as tools for stewardship, preservation, and responsible access to cultural knowledge. The day concludes with a keynote reflecting on how cultural heritage professionals can move from principles to practice in reimagining ownership, access, and stewardship.
13:30- 13:45 Welcome remarks
13:45- 15:00Session on Access to GLAM Research: Repository Showcases. Chaired by Joanna Norman
, Director of the V&A Research Institute, National Art Library and Archives, V&A.
Dr Tim Evans, Assistant Director of the Archaeology Data Service and Heritage Science Data Service. Repository services for Archaeology, and Conservation and Heritage Science.
The talk will provide a short overview of the ADS which since 1996 has been the leading digital archive for data from UK-based archaeological fieldwork and research. The talk will also showcase the new HSDS. Launched in October 2024 the HSDS provides core digital research services as part of the UKRI RICHeS programme, to unlock potential for innovation in heritage science and conservation research and its capacity to advance understanding, preservation, and management of UK heritage.
Sarah Molloy, Head of Library Research Support at Queen Mary University of London, and Co-Investigator, Enact Project. Introducing the Enact Practice Research Data Service.
The Enact: PRVoices and SPARKLE phase 2 project launched on 01 October. Funded by AHRC as part of the iDAH programme, the project's mission is to deliver a function-rich, intuitive, and beautiful digital space to preserve, share, and fully account for the insights in artistic works and the processes for their creation. The project team comprises partners from domain and disciplinary backgrounds working in collaboration.
Jenny Basford, Repository Services Lead at the British Library. Cultivating Cultural Heritage Research: Growing the Shared Repository Service for GLAM institutions.
The Shared Repository Service for GLAM sector institutions turns eight in spring 2026, and with this comes a new phase of growth: to scale the Service up to provide an institutional repository for as many research-producing organisations as possible. From organisations with worldwide recognition, to smaller but by no means lesser institutions, the SRS is committed to expanding over 2026-2029 to incorporate a minimum of 25 partners. This talk will give a short history of the SRS, a description of the platform itself and how we propose to grow the Service.
15:00- 15:30 Break
15:30- 16:25Closing Keynote. Chaired by Dr Mia Ridge is the British Library’s Digital Curator for Western Heritage Collections.
Lorna M. Hughes, Professor of Digital Humanities and Dean for Global Engagement (Europe), University of Glasgow. Long Walk Home: creating, sharing and using community generated digital heritage at scale.
From 2021-25, the Our Heritage, Our Stories (OHOS) project was funded through the AHRC’s Towards a National Collection Programme to explore ways that the UK’s rich, fragmented, and vulnerable collections of community generated digital heritage can be made open, linked, and shared. The project explored way that technology design can empower communities to tell their own stories, on their own terms. The talk will discuss practical insights from OHOS, and situate the project in the broader conceptual framework of critical digital heritage. It will discuss both current digital ecosystems of community heritage, and emerging digital afterlives for CGDC that enable this content to complement, current and contradict official historical narratives.