Verksamhetsberättelse 2020/Story: Expectations are changing

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2020

In this Story we are focusing on how COVID-19 seems to have increased the speed of change in the GLAM sector towards more digital meetings and activities. There is an opportunity for the Wikimedia movement to move faster with new partnerships across the world and supply an interesting addition to digital engagement that all organizations currently are struggling with.

With the global pandemic, the GLAM sector is also undergoing major changes. The needs and expectations are changing towards becoming more digital. There is a tendency for increasing dissemination of digital knowledge and although digitization has long been on the agenda, digital development is a requirement to be relevant.

Experience among GLAM staff to organize digital meetings with partners are likely to have increased substantially which would in turn increase our possibilities to support partners across the world in our international GLAM work as they are comfortable to organize video meetings and not just physical meetings. It seems that this could shorten the initiation time for projects as subsequent meetings can be scheduled more quickly than before. It will be interesting to see how this development will continue as the pandemic calms down and we return to a more normal existence where the institutions are meeting places.

One of the strengths of Wikimedia platforms is that they are collaborative areas. In collaboration with the libraries, we have seen that tools for communication and platforms for structured collaboration are needed. It is mainly through video meetings that communication has been developed and together worksheets and version management tools make this integration very effective.

We have received more spontaneous inquiries from organizations that develop their presence digitally. There may be e.g. festivals, meetings and other physical events where the organizers have reached out to us and wondered what we can offer and if you cannot simultaneously write articles or upload media when you are still running and planning your digital engagement.