Over the past few months I’ve been doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work on the GLAM Workbench – automating, standardising, and documenting processes for developing and managing repositories. These sort of things ease the maintenance burden on me and help make the GLAM Workbench sustainable, even as it continues to grow. But these changes are also aimed at making it easier for you to contribute to the GLAM Workbench!

Perhaps you’re part of a GLAM organisation that wants to help researchers explore its collection data – why not create your own section of the GLAM Workbench? It would be a great opportunity for staff to develop their own digital skills and learn about the possibilities of Jupyter notebooks. I’ve developed a repository template and some detailed documentation to get you started. The repository template includes everything you need to create and test notebooks, as well as built-in integration with Binder, Docker, Reclaim Cloud, and Zenodo. And, of course, I’ll be around to help you through the process.

Or perhaps you’re a researcher who wants to share some code you’ve developed that extends or improves an existing GLAM Workbench repository. Yes please! Or maybe you’re a GLAM Workbench user who has something to add to one of the lists of resources; or you’ve noticed a problem with some of the documentation that you’d like to fix. All contributions welcome!

The Get involved! page includes links to all this information, as well as some other possibilities such as becoming a sponsor, or sharing news. And to recognise those who make a contribution to the code or documentation there’s also a brand new contributors page.

I’m looking forward to exploring how we can build the GLAM Workbench together. #dhhacks