The submission portal for the GLAMis will open on March 22 and close on April 17. To ready your materials for submission, you may wish to review the following guidelines.
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Eligibility
Any project, regardless of launch date, is eligible if it has been in active use from April 2021–now and has been produced by or for a cultural heritage organization. Our goal in opening up eligibility beyond the traditional one-year launch window is not to encourage the re-submission of every long-standing digital project in your portfolio, but instead to recognize that good digital work may improve with time based on evaluation, re-engineering, migration to new platforms, and major content updates. Older projects submitted consideration should describe recent iterations and updates.
Submitting Your Project
Any museum, gallery, library or archive (GLAM) institution may submit their project(s) for award consideration. Agencies and media producers may submit their work on behalf of client institutions.
Categories
You may enter your projects in one category or more. The GLAMi co-chairs and juries may recommend moving a project from one category to another as appropriate. If you are unsure about the correct category for your entry and would like feedback from the GLAMi co-chairs, you may send your questions to us at glami@museweb.net. You may also find it useful to review the judging rubrics that will be used by the pool juries to select category finalists and to look at past winners and finalists. For 2023, we have updated the names and scope of several categories and added two new ones:
Design A special category for exemplary design intended for new or redesigned websites, apps, and multimedia resources. Judges will consider a project’s graphic design, UX design, and accessibility.
(UPDATED) Interactive and Immersive These projects connect with audiences that want to DO something. The category includes in-gallery and online interactives, multimedia installations, VR/AR, and mobile applications.
(UPDATED) Internal Tools and Professional Practices Projects submitted in this category serve staff and the community at large, using hardware, software, and other digital tools to enable more effective, efficient, or far-reaching practices. Examples include business and content systems, infrastructure, databases, and communications systems. We are also hoping to receive examples of outstanding documentation for digital projects, including style guides, digital strategies and policies, data dictionaries, workflow diagrams, and the like.
(NEW) Linear Media This new category includes projects previously considered in the Interactive and Immersive group. It covers audio and video projects, including films, videos, audio tours, podcasts, and broadcasts (including those on social media platforms).
Marketing and Promotion The marketing category represents individual projects or multi-tactic campaigns aimed at meeting a goal to advance audience engagement, build brand awareness, increase visitation, or otherwise as defined. Category entries could span anything from robust, long-term digital marketing campaigns to one-off social media promotions. Other examples include effective communication campaigns via email, social media, mobile apps, and the website; dynamic social media content such as TikToks, Shorts, and Live; digital advertising, sponsored posts and promotions; and leveraging experiences within the exhibit to encourage post-visit engagement (such as photos, surveys, talk-backs, and more)
Judges will review web and digital content for its ability to meet business or engagement initiatives, not for the educational content itself (submit those projects under Online Resources).
(UPDATED) Online Resources Reorganized for 2023 to combine two previous categories, Resources for General Audiences and Families and Resources for Scholars and Researchers), the Online Resources category encompasses digital content for adults and children, including teachers, families, classes, and independent visitors. Examples include exhibition microsites, teacher resources, lesson plans, plan-ahead and post-visit content. It also includes digital content intended for study and research, including collections online, digital publications, and primary source and archival content. Materials prepared for aggregation in networked resources may be considered in this category.
(NEW) Writing This new category will recognize writing on digital practice in cultural institutions, will be published shortly. Written content, in English, published online, in print, or via email newsletter or listserv, will be eligible. Authors may enter individual posts or chapters, or collections of content, or both. Writing must be publicly available. Note that writing done as an element of or in support of a larger project (script for a video or text for an online feature) is not eligible in this category.
Special Jury Prizes The Special Jury will consider projects—including any submitted in the seven main categories—for special awards that recognize innovative and effective solutions to real-time concerns facing museums and their audiences, as well as experimental work that may advance the field’s use of emerging technologies. Though the Special Jury is encouraged to make awards to any worthy project that fits these criteria, each year we will also choose an area of focus that is particularly timely. In 2021, the Special Jury recognized projects grappling with social justice issues and with outreach by organizations to audiences affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2023, we hope to consider projects that found ways to improve working conditions for culture workers and that have done exemplary work in universal design and accessibility.
What you’ll need to submit
Before completing the form, verify you’re a registered MW user. To submit, please fill in the nomination form and include as much information as possible to help the judges evaluate your project. In addition to the project description, you are encouraged to provide either a video (maximum 5 minutes) or images. Projects will not be judged based on video or image quality, but both help judges evaluate diverse submissions, especially those projects intended primarily for onsite audiences. Fields included in the nomination form are shown below; required fields are starred. Please note that, unless you make a request in advance, some or all of the submitted information may appear on the MuseWeb website during or after the GLAMi Awards, except that any information appearing in the field, “Budget and Resources” will not be shared.
- Project Title* A formal name or descriptive name for the project.
- Submitter Name* The name of the person submitting the nomination.
- Submitter Email* The email address of the person submitting the nomination.
- Project Organization The client or organization for which the project has been produced.
- Project Organization Contact Name The name of a primary contact at the project organization, if different from the submitter.
- Project Organization Contact Email The email address of a primary contact at the project organization, if different from the submitter.
- Team Members. List any team members whose names should be included on an awards certificate. The list may include both in-house and contract staff and include project managers and administrative staff, content creators and editors, technologists, photographers, and sponsors as well as any and all external media/design agencies, writers, or producers contracted to produce the project. To allow for generous acknowledgment of large teams of creators, this is a free text field.
- Category* Select one or more categories for your submission (see list above).
- Description* Tell us about the project and why you think it is great at doing what it does. You may also include information about its history, location, dates, platform, and technical specifications. Cite specific pages by URL. Include screen shots if desired.
- Additional questions to inform judging process (1500 characters each, maximum):
- What are your intended audience(s) for the project?
- How does the project fit into your organization’s current mission and goals?
- What are your measures of success for the project. What are your promotion and evaluation plans?
- What were your accessibility goals? Did the project achieve them?
- Describe the project budget and resources, including internal and external staffing, sustainability plans, and any funding/income opportunities. (ANSWERS TO THIS QUESTION WILL NOT BE PUBLISHED ONLINE OR SHARED WITH POOL JURORS)
- Links Providing a range of supplemental materials to support your application is encouraged. Please submit images, illustrations, videos, or documents as you think necessary to allow jurors to review the project thoroughly.
- If the project is available to the general public, please provide a URL.
- If you are submitting internal documentation, you are encouraged to provide as complete a set of documents as possible, as PDF(s), or in the form of screenshots.
- If you are submitting video or audio content, links to the complete resource should be provided.
- You are also encouraged to link to a video (maximum 5 minutes) on YouTube or Vimeo that provides a walkthrough of the experience for the jurors. The video can be simply shot on a mobile device or edited from prior footage, just make sure it conveys the core experience to the judges. Projects will not be judged based on video quality, but videos are essential to fairly evaluating the diversity of projects submitted every year, especially the numerous projects intended primarily for onsite audiences. The best videos allow the judges to experience the project and/or see it in action, rather than just restating the written description. Please caption your video for submission. This can be done easily via third party services such, as rev.com, Cielo24, and free via YouTube and Amara.org.
- You may also share up to 20 images. Images can be shared via Dropbox or Google Drive links.
