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View of an illuminated display case in the exhibition of the German Museum of Books and Writing

Information – a raw material? Data fuelling station at the German Museum of Books and Writing

A blue and white fuel pump with an integrated screen positioned in front of a grey wall A blue and white fuel pump with an integrated screen positioned in front of a grey wall

A fuelling station in the museum: for the next three years, the permanent exhibition at the German Museum of Books and Writing will be home to a new object, a “data fuelling station” from which visitors can figuratively pump freely accessible knowledge. (Photo: DNB, Christine Hartmann)

In its role as a documentation centre for 5,000 years of media change, the German Museum of Books and Writing monitors current developments in media digitisation. The data fuelling station sheds light on our changing understanding of data and invites visitors to immerse themselves in the collection of open access data from 2014 and download it as required.

Not so long ago, data was still seen as the 21st century equivalent of oil. Data was believed to be the raw material which would be used to build a bright, prosperous future. The commonly held opinion in politics and the media was that data would keep the economy running and thus create affluence. Wikimedia developed the data fuelling station as a visual representation of this belief. It was first presented at the re:publica conference in 2014 and was immediately a crowd puller. Instead of gushing with oil, the data fuelling station supplied free open access data: e-books, geodata, music files, maps, library data and much more.

Since then, our understanding of data has changed – it should be freely available to the general public so that free knowledge can be extracted from it. Following the data fuelling station, Wikimedia has now developed a new object – a data pump – to visualise this change in meaning. The idea behind it: data is the new groundwater.

A blue and white fuel pump with an integrated screen positioned in front of a grey wall Photo: DNB, Christine Hartmann

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Data fuelling station at the German Museum of Books and Writing

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Content

  1. Lessons learned at the museum – the digital programme of the German Museum of Books and Writing
  2. Digital access to the St. Elizabeth manuscript
  3. Unique image sources for front-line book shops
  4. KI-Box
  5. Information – a raw material? Data fuelling station at the German Museum of Books and Writing
  6. Books in the third dimension - Museum acquires a collection of kinetic books
  7. KlingKlang – sounds from media history
  8. Book bags – The collection of publisher Mark Lehmstedt
  9. A family of bookbinders in Germany and Europe – additions to the Röllig estate
  10. Pre-mortem legacy from Hans Ticha
  11. Open! Stories from the German Museum of Books and Writing
  12. 75 years on... digitisation project “Digital Historic Book Collection”

Last changes: 22.04.2021
Short-URL: https://www.dnb.de/dbsmnews

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