After spending the last year exploring the decentralized web for makers and civil society, I think some of the strongest use cases come from the world of Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM!)

Decentralized storage enables true data ownership, which is critical for communities that have had their data suppressed. Canadians know well that Indigenous communities have had their stories, cultural practices, and language outlawed, so it’s understandable that independent data ownership is non-negotiable.

But how do you put decentralized storage into practice? 221A is currently running a survey on the practices of organizations working on the digital preservation of cultural assets.

If you work in arts and culture and need to store assets such as digital art objects or other digital cultural media, I invite you to complete an anonymous

.

Your insights will help prototype a distributed storage system developed by 221A’s The Node Library and Hypha Worker Co-operative dedicated to arts and cultural heritage workers who want to preserve digital assets in the long term.

The Node Library is also seeking support from Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web via Artizen. If you have some crypto sitting in a wallet why not join me as a sponsor, or vote for their project?

We are all creating a huge amount of data including photos, videos, and text. Unlike in the past when we would have physical copies of photographs, today’s data is temporary and can easily disappear. Niall Firth from MIT Technology Review reminds us that platforms like YouTube and Instagram may not always be around, and if (and when!) that happens, our history and memories could be lost forever. This has happened before with platforms like Geocities and Myspace.

Fortunately, there are people and organizations working on solutions. I find Jack Cushman, the director of Library Innovation Lab @ Harvard Lab, and organizations like Filecoin Foundation for the Decentralized Web to be particularly interesting. They are part of a movement by archivists and historians to ensure that future generations will be able to piece together the story of our generation.

I am excited that TechSoup’s Public Good App House is delving into this area over the next year with a new program to assist galleries, libraries, archives, and museums in adding their archives to the decentralized web. Follow me on LinkedIn for more updates or contact me at eli@techsoup.org.