Annual Report 2025/Story: Renewed momentum in our GLAM collaborations in Sweden

Access

Use

Community

Enabling

Access

2025

In this story, we take a deep dive into how our work with the cultural heritage sector developed during 2025, and how we succeeded in laying a solid foundation for further scaling up in 2026.

In collaboration with several institutions, including ArkDes, we worked on the project A Network of Places to improve structured, linked information about Swedish architects and their works. The tool Arkitektkartan was developed to visualise this information.

This beautiful photograph from the collections of Nordiska museet exemplifies the care and commitment to quality required to make cultural heritage digitally accessible.

Wikimedia Sverige has a long tradition of working together with the Swedish cultural heritage sector to increase the visibility and accessibility of cultural heritage collections and cultural heritage information. The association has established recurring collaborations and is valued as a strategically and technically knowledgeable partner. In that capacity, during 2025 we continued our consultancy work both for established partners such as Nordiska museet and for new partners such as the Swedish Museum of Natural History. Initial assignments in the form of lectures and courses were also carried out at universities and for international organisations such as the Nordic Council of Ministers.

Through the linked open data project A Network of Places, we were able to offer several highly appreciated OpenRefine training sessions for staff in the cultural heritage sector, an offer that was later continued at the initiative of the Swedish National Heritage Board. The project is a continuation of the earlier project Useful Authorities for Data-Driven Collection Research and establishes Wikidata as a hub for authority data between different cultural heritage collections. Both projects have been appreciated by the participating museums and by the funder, the Swedish National Heritage Board, and we see good opportunities to apply for a similar project in 2026.

We and our projects were highlighted at a number of conferences aimed at cultural heritage professionals, where we were able to communicate the importance of open knowledge platforms to this specialist audience. By hiring a new Chief Operating Officer with a long background in the museum sector, we have future-proofed the strong relationships the association has with the sector. We have held targeted discussions with the Association of National Museums, not only about new joint applications, but also about renewing the joint memorandum of understanding that was signed in 2011. We see such a renewal as an important strategic building block for further expanding our collaboration with the museum sector.

A photo from our new partner, the Swedish Museum of Natural History, which received a great deal of attention towards the end of the year.

We have also begun work on developing clear models for organisational membership, with the aim that most of our partners will eventually become members of the association.

It is crucial, both for the memorandum of understanding and for future organizational memberships, that the leadership of cultural heritage organisations is aware of the opportunities and benefits that collaboration with Wikimedia Sverige can bring. To increase this awareness, we produced a new report on the impact of our collaboration, which was sent out to our partners in the cultural heritage sector and was met with a very positive response.