Community: IPFS in Libraries, Archives and Museums

An ever-increasing number of people are exploring the possibilities of applying IPFS to the work of Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums (ā€œGLAMā€). On a couple of different occasions (like this github issue and this twitter discussion) people have expressed interest in creating a place for these explorers, creators, inventors and enthusiasts to find each other and exchange ideas, solutions, excitement, doubts, XML, etc.

Rather than creating a semi-opaque channel in Yet Another Slack Team, letā€™s try using discourse as the forum for these discussions. You can also find some stuff under the #DWebLAM twitter hashtag

Feel free to post things to this topic and feel free to create your own new topics here in the Libraries, Archives and Museums category on discuss.ipfs.io.

To get things started, please let everyone know what youā€™re up to, what you want to work on, and share links to any GLAM+IPFS-related info, code and projects you know about.

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@flyingzumwalt At Code4Lib we spoke briefly about how IPFS and decentralization can address several problem areas in the GLAM world and that it might be good to outline basic next-step projects that could demonstrate its potential and value. Areas to focus on that are of value to GLAM institutions might be scholarly communication (annotations/transcription/crowdsourcing), preservation, linked data, performance (i.e., download from the closest network node), interoperability, privacy, scientific research data, etc. Any others?

On a separate note, a few folks discussing on the code4lib #ipfs slack channel are throwing together an informal call for folks interested or working on IPFS in GLAM (Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums). The goal is an hour call for someone to walk through a particular project - code, data, docs, other - leveraging IPFS with folks able to see IPFS in action, ask question, or set up further collaborations/projects.

If youā€™re interested, please fill out this doodle poll by this Wednesday with a time that works for you to have a flexible, 1 hour informal call (via video chat platform TBD): https://doodle.com/poll/vscnptzrkgqdt8nd

Select what will work for you to have this first meeting, but also look to a time that could work as a recurring meeting. Depending on group output, these calls may be monthly or quarterly or something else. The meetings will always be open to all.

I believe it should auto-detect your timezone, but let me know if not - it ranges on hour slots from 7 AM Pacific to 1 PM Pacific.

For the first meeting, I believe we have Ed Silverton talking about ā€œdemo IIIF ā€˜Level 0ā€™ image tiles loading over IPFS. The process to create the tiles + info.json could definitely be refined I think. I was also going to talk a bit about the workflow gitbook Iā€™ve been helping with for creating 3D models.ā€

More info as this gets pinned down. Holla at this thread if youā€™d like to give a later demo or read through on a call.

Looks like it didnā€™t auto-update the time zones. You have to enable timezone support when you create the poll. Iā€™ll update my times to reflect PST times, but you might want to start over with time zones enabled.

Yeah, my bad in using the beta doodle.

so there was no time that worked for everyone (apologies) but Tuesday 2 May 2017 at 10 AM Pacific / 11 AM Mountain / Noon Central / 1 PM Eastern / 6 PM BST / 7 PM CEST has been selected, with Ed Silverton talking about his IPFS/IIIF work and Gitbook for IPFS with 3D Model management.

Additionally, I set up a notes / information repo for the informal calls. happy to move into some space other than my personal github or add anyone who wants to be an admin: https://github.com/cmh2166/IPFS-GLAM-Calls

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Weā€™ve been talking about creating a new github org for repos like this one. Your new repo has spurred me to properly propose it: https://github.com/ipfs/pm/issues/448

This would let us fork your repo into ipfs-labs, so we could call it something like ipfs-labs/community-glam

@cm_harlow Great initiative! Iā€™ll try to join as well. I have been experimenting with the MediaChain stack where a part of the IPFS technology is being used. Currently I only have Dutch slides reporting on this, English version will be out there soon.

Iā€™m excited for tomorrowā€™s call. I made the new github org and cloned @cm_harlowā€™s repo to https://github.com/ipfs-labs/ipfs-glam-community

Find info about the call and how to join here: https://github.com/ipfs-labs/ipfs-glam-community/blob/master/Notes/2017-05-02.md

Heya @Enno - do you have a date/time that is open for you to talk about the work you surfaced during the last call?

Hi @cm_harlow, sure for it would fit on 15, 16, 17, 22 or 23 May at 10-11 AM Pacific / 11-12 AM Mountain / Noon-1 PM Central / 1-2 PM Eastern / 6-7 PM BST / 7-8 PM CEST or 1 hour laterā€¦ hope one of these fit otherwise I will be available after 15/6. I will upload a few slides on my Mediachain adventure soon.

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Lets plan for the 23rd of May. Iā€™ll write up some prelim notes and share out.

thank you!

Iā€™ve updated the community repo with date / time / speaker+topic. Also reminder the code4lib ipfs slack channel

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Iā€™m looking forward to it!

For one of the future calls, we should consider inviting the people who made IPWB - interplanetary wayback - to talk about their work applying IPFS to web archiving.

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In another thread on these forums I just posted one of the clearer versions of my thinking about how IPFS fits really well into the activities of a library. All my stuff about ā€œGolden Age for Librariesā€ revolves around this basic pattern.

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I agree with your vision on this role for libraries and other public institutions. With libraries and other public institutions we should be able to create a public infrastructure that can be used to store valuable, public information. But for many institutions this might still be very long jump away from their daily routines.

In order to create a bigger awareness of this responsibility I have been thinking about the idea of combining IPFS (and distributed technologies in general) with the Makerspaces / FabLab movement. This is quite a popular movement in the Netherlands (and other countries). It would be fun to organize workshops in public libraries to ā€˜make your own IPFS nodeā€™ for libraries and their audience, f.e. based on RaspberryPiā€™s. I not quite sure if we could drag the focus away from 3D printing but it would be worthwhile to give it a try. We probably would need some more tools to lower the barrier for practical use of IPFS. Just a thought on a Tuesdaynightā€¦ :wink:

Thanks! I uploaded some slides about the Mediachain project, which I will discuss briefly on the 23rd, you can find them here: https://github.com/netwerk-digitaal-erfgoed/general-documentation/blob/master/20170512%20report%20on%20mediachain%20pilot%20Dutch%20Heritage%20Network.pdf

Thanks, we are here and listening! :slight_smile:

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Hi Everyone! Iā€™m looking forward to tomorrowā€™s call.

Time: Tuesday 23 May 2017, 10-11 AM Pacific / 11-12 AM Mountain / Noon-1 PM Central / 1-2 PM Eastern / 6-7 PM BST / 7-8 PM CEST
Video conference link: https://zoom.us/j/779-351-365

Notes at https://github.com/ipfs-labs/ipfs-glam-community/blob/master/Notes/2017-05-23.md

I have studied for some time IPFS and it has the potential to move further the GLAM models for aggregating and curating the resources. At least on part regarding trust and versioning, I believe it will become instrumental in the near future. I would love to see an interface with YACY.

YACY looks promising. I hadnā€™t heard of it. Thanks for pointing it out @kosson We definitely need a decentralized search engine for the decentralized web.

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