When we come together

Libraries, Archives, Museums and Galleries are all together bound to cross a very turbulent period in the advent of a golden age. The debate over the convergence of these fields landed for the first time on neutral ground when they were coined as memory institutions and invited to collaborate in building common services like World Digital Library, Multilingual Inventory of Cultural Heritage in Europe, Access to Cultural Heritage Networks Across Europe, The European Library and Europeana. In the light of the unfolding economic situation, the struggle to keep a valid social profile is often taken on the grounds of collaboration were enough resources are attracted in order to keep balance and even progress. The future presents a leverage point that should not be ignored or treated lightly: building the informational context through open and standard compliant technologies. LAMG specialists claim to have switched to a functional paradigm that puts the user needs as the core business. Doing so is to prepare for the future and the future is one where the resources are aggregated and linked in what we call today Semantic Web. Here we take into consideration the building blocks of this future starting from what we have, and advancing towards an inclusive picture where we are together. Open standards, open technologies, and open licenses are the key components of this space for collaboration among us. We should be swift in embracing them as our users have done this already