Projects

Working collaboratively to share knowledge, learn from others and develop ideas is my favourite thing to do. Here is a selection of my recent and ongoing projects.

Open GLAM Survey

Since 2018, I have been leading an international survey of open access policy and practice in the GLAM sector with Dr Andrea Wallace. Find out more.

Map visualisation of the Open GLAM survey by Douglas McCarthy and Dr Andrea Wallace

Open GLAM Medium

I am the founder and co-editor of the Medium publication Open GLAM, which presents global and multilingual perspectives on open access to cultural heritage, written by leading voices in the field.

Home page of the Medium publication Open GLAM

Museums and NFTs

As NFTs have risen to prominence, cultural institutions and heritage professionals have been required to understand, assess and engage with the environment and technologies that underpin them, including blockchains, smart contracts and cryptocurrencies. Find out how I’m tracking cultural institutions’ engagement with NFTs, and why I’m skeptical.

NFT GLAM survey, 2022-

Editorial content for Europeana

I have curated, written and edited a number of online exhibitions for Europeana. Here is a selection of this work.

Europeana exhibition chapter Rebuilding Notre Dame (curator and author)
Europeana exhibition Visions of War (author and co-creator)
Europeana exhibition Art Nouveau – A Universal Style (editor and co-author)
Europeana exhibition An Ecstasy of Beauty – Finnish Artists Travelling Beyond Europe 1882-1926 (editor)

Creative Commons 2020 Virtual Summit

In 2020, I co-Chaired the GLAM track at the 2020 Virtual CC Global Summit, which attracted 1300+ participants, 170+ sessions and featured 200+ presenters and 60+ countries! I worked with an amazing group of volunteers from around the globe who made up the Program Committee, the backbone of the CC Summit: curating the programme, identifying speakers, fielding questions, and exemplifying the open culture of Creative Commons.

Poster for CC Global Summit 2020

The Copyright Cortex is an online resource dedicated to copyright and digital cultural heritage. It was developed to provide libraries, archives, museums and other memory institutions with information and expert commentary on how copyright law affects the creation and management of digital cultural heritage.

In 2020, I was proud to be asked to guest curate the Copyright Cortex, adding dozen of resources on open access and cultural heritage to its corpus, whilst tweeting every addition from the Cortex Twitter account. Go Team Cortex!

Header image: The Millinery Shop (detail), 1879/86, by Edgar Degas. Art Institute of Chicago, CC0


© Douglas McCarthy, CC BY 4.0 unless otherwise stated