10 years of GLAMhack and promoting openness in cultural heritage

This year marked the 10th anniversary of our yearly GLAMhack – an occasion to celebrate all the achievements that have been made in these past ten years and also look into the future and set the direction for the future GLAMhacks to follow.

For this special edition, the Zentral- und Hochschulbibliothek (ZHB) in Lucerne was our host and set the stage for two days of collaboration, exchange and creative solution-finding. 68 participants from a broad range of professional backgrounds and institutions joined us for the main hackathon event, which took place from September 6 to 7, 2024. They worked in interdisciplinary teams on 15 challenges around this year’s theme “On the Move” to promote openness among galleries, libraries, archives and museums.

Following this year’s theme, the objective of the GLAMhack24 was to trace the movements of individuals to and from Switzerland and further away, capturing the historical footprints they leave within cultural heritage collections, such as images and letters, and  reintroducing them to present-day users.

The theme has been strongly reflected in the challenges that have been worked on. One team for instance developed a prototype of a web app challenging visitors to find specific points of interest and allowing them to compare today’s scenery with historical pictures of the very same monument. Another project under the name “Pimp my portrait gallery” worked with portraits of the gallery of remarkable people of Lucerne and animated them to talk and tell their own stories. The final presentations revealed a broad range of projects that had been worked on, and the prototypes presented displayed a lot of creativity, imagination and innovative thinking.  Explore all the different projects here or below.

As in the years before, the GLAMhack24 did not only consist of the hackathon itself, but also of an opening night prior to the main event. The program was kicked off in a hands-on spirit with the workshop on GLAM and Digital Humanities. Around 20 participants worked out the challenges, opportunities and key success factors for the GLAM – Digital Humanities collaboration and what activities should be taken up in the short and long term.

The evening continued with a presentation of the CultureFLOW project in collaboration with the Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla (BUAP) in Mexico. Students in visual arts from BUAP presented their artistic creations on objects from Mexico-related heritage collections in Switzerland. The artists shared their experiences during their creative process, which in one case involved getting in touch with the Lipan people (the south-easternmost Apache tribe living across the border between Texas and Mexico). A projection by Oleg Lavrovsky rounded up the evening’s program.

If you missed this year’s event, don’t worry! After the hackathon is before the hackathon. The 11th edition of the GLAMhack will be hosted by the Stiftung für Kunst, Kultur und Gesellschaft (SKKG) in Winterthur. It will take place from 13 to 15 November, 2025. Registrations are not yet open, but if you subscribe to our newsletter you will be the first to hear about it.