Arts and Cultural Heritage Working Group

DLF Arts and Cultural Heritage Working Group

About

The DLF Arts and Cultural Heritage Working Group (formerly know as the DLF Museums Cohort) is open to all. Anyone working in museums or arts-based institutions, public history and cultural heritage, those engaged in public or academic museum or exhibition-based projects, and those with a general interest in museums are warmly invited to participate in meetings and activities.

Get to know others working on digital preservation, collections, exhibition development, museum libraries management, rights management, teaching, user engagement and more—across the cultural heritage sector.

The Arts and Cultural Heritage Working Group community is a self-directing group. Meetings so far have included topics of discussion ranging from systems migrations to labor concerns in museums, as well as presentations by staff from the New York Botanical Garden & Steere Herbarium on decolonizing botanical catalogsWashington State University’s Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation on their Sustainable Heritage Network, the British Museum Library’s transition to a new library management system, and the Autry Museum of the American West on community building in K-12 programming, most of which have been based on community suggestions and ideas. 

Need feedback about a project, or have something exciting to share? Want to discuss a local issue or challenge? Get in touch to reserve time or lead an upcoming meeting.

History

Beginning in 2015 with generous support from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, DLF’s Museums Cohort originated as a small group of member museums. After an open call for new members was held in 2018, the Cohort expanded its membership with fourteen additional institutions. In addition to museums, fine art and design colleges, a membership organization, and other art libraries joined the cohort. 

In 2019, participation in DLF’s Museums Cohort was opened to all, regardless of institutional membership or affiliation and our monthly cohort meetings became a space for practitioners across disciplinary and institutional boundaries to come together to build skills, share ideas, strengthen digital engagement and collections, and advance technological initiatives, specifically within the museum, arts-based institution, and cultural heritage context.

In the spirit of openness and accessibility, in 2023 the Museums Cohort was re-named the Arts and Cultural Heritage Working Group in order to be inclusive of arts and cultural heritage students and professionals working and studying across a variety of institutional types.

Get Involved

Meetings

Check group communications or the DLF Community Calendar for the most up-to-date schedule.

DLF’s Arts and Cultural Heritage Group currently meets on an ad-hoc basis. Have a topic you’d like us to cover at a meeting? Contact us at info@diglib.org and we will help you organize a group call.

Communications

Initiatives and Resources

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