Towards a Unified Public Portal for Place-based Photographs

The Open Archive Portal Network [OPAN] is an internationally federated network based in Geneva, Switzerland that represents innovative open archive photo history portals across the world, begun in 2023. We are inviting collaborators to work alongside our members to jointly build a platform (backend + interface) that combines the most successful features and designs of our user-friendly portal projects. Once built, we also have created code to network our platforms together so that images connected to common places and themes can be virtually reunited (a federated network for images).  

OPAN members all started our separate public portal initiatives to fill a clear public need that wasn’t being met by established institutions in our respective countries. We have been digitizing local artifacts (mostly photographs) for years, while building innovative public digital platforms and tools to display and share them (our portals are uniquely user-focused). In creating these public portals, we are enabling stories about everyday life and cultural heritage to be told. We believe family and local history matters, and our projects are igniting public memory and community engagement in many different and inspiring ways.  

OPAN members are digital innovators, thinking well beyond traditional online archival practices (and interfaces) to deliver what users need and want. We have all designed mapping, timeline, exhibit, and search/navigation platforms that organize cultural heritage in terms of place, time, and theme, encouraging facile exploration and interaction with our photographs. We have all gained significant experience in serving our local communities. And, by making photographs and other local history artifacts so easily searchable, downloadable, and usable through liberal Creative Commons licensing, we are changing the way the public thinks about their local history and their role in collective cultural heritage.

Our projects exist in many different countries (currently across Europe, the United States, and South America). They are also redundant–why are we building code separately when we could work together? By establishing the OPAN federation based in Geneva, Switzerland, we are combining forces (sharing code and interface designs, and exchanging best practices) to make our individual projects more sustainable. We are also expanding our network and finding paths for funding. Creating code for a common platform is an important step towards building a sustainable and imagination-filled federated network.

[European portals: Ajapaik (Estonia), Azopan (Romania), Fortepan (Hungary), MagnaZmien (Malta), Bulgarian Visual Archive (Bulgaria), Community Archive (Poland), HistoriaHelvetica (Switzerland), Topotheque (Austria)]

[Non-European portals: Fortepan US (USA), Enterreno (Chile), Archivo Visual Argentino (Argentina)]