Culture Grid

Building on the success of the Peoples Network Discovery Service, developed for the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council by k-int, we are working closely with Collections Trust to implement a new open software and hardware platform for the cultural sector which aims to aggregate digital content from cultural publishers and syndicate it to the general public in partnership with mainstream media services including search engines and broadcasters.

The Collections Trust is responsible for OpenCulture, an ongoing initiative to promote a more open, democratic and participative approach to cultural collections. OpenCulture includes strands of work which address new technologies, consumer trends and the broader legislative environment. The main deliverable of OpenCulture is the Culture Grid which is based around open source software from k-int.

From July 2009 the Culture Grid platform is being used to drive the new, enhanced version of the Peoples Network site. By exposing standards based machine APIs for both ingest and dissemination it also allows a wider range of digital content to be stored and accessed. The platform will be supported and enhanced over the next year to facilitate this.