A Network of Places is an ongoing Swedish research and development collaboration (concluding in early 2026) that explores what becomes possible when cultural heritage institutions and open knowledge infrastructures jointly build interoperable, public-facing data. Led by ArkDes (the Swedish Centre for Architecture and Design) together with Nationalmuseum, Tekniska museet, the Swedish National Heritage Board’s archive, and Wikimedia Sverige, the project addresses a familiar barrier in the GLAM sector: rich collections remain distributed across separate databases, described with incompatible metadata models, and therefore hard to discover, connect, and analyze.

When data is interlinked, it creates opportunities for researchers to carry out more in-depth analyses of heritage data. To demonstrate these possibilities, part of the project also involved examining how the methods we applied were perceived from a research perspective.

Our demo showcases the outcomes and working methods of the project, with a focus on place-centred linking as a practical infrastructure of engagement. We will demonstrate how collection and archival records from partner institutions can be connected through shared geographical metadata and published as Linked Open Data, using Wikidata and the wider Wikimedia ecosystem as a hub for identifiers, cross-institutional linking, and public reuse. This hybrid approach creates connectivity across disciplines and between cultural heritage institutions and society.

The demo will include:

1. A guided walkthrough of our workflow, highlighting the different role of the cultural heritage institutions and Wikimedia Sverige,

2. Interactive data visualisations that make the "network of places" tangible,

3. A perspective of a researcher who engaged with the datasets to explore cross-collection patterns

The goal is to showcase the results of a multi-institutional collaboration carried out in the spirit of free and open knowledge, inspiring the participants to reflect on their own contributions to the free knowledge ecosystem.