Openverse Wins 2023 Open Education Award, Seeks Community Feedback for 2024 Roadmap

Openverse has landed an Open Education Award for Excellence in the Open Infrastructure category. Open Education Global (OEG) is a non-profit organization that supports the use of open education to expand education access and affordability. Its annual awards recognize outstanding contributions to the Open Education community and its network of resources.

Openverse is one of 16 winners selected from more than 170 applicants. The award reviewers suggested Openverse “should be the primary recommended search for OER development,” due to its clear licensing and easy, one-click attribution, among other features:

That easy attribution feature (one-click copy for a full formed Creative Commons attribution) might be reason enough for an award, but the features to filter searches by source collections and other parameters (image orientation, specific license) provides seekers of open content important affordances to find clearly licensed media they can reuse.

Openverse should be the primary recommended search for OER development, as the licensing is explicitly clear, not subject to third party owners writing their own license), being of great value for projects that mix content from multiple sources.

Openverse has made significant progress since coming under the WordPress project’s umbrella. In the past year, the team has added usage analytics, made major improvements to its user interface, moved Openverse out of an iFrame, added filtering and blurring of sensitive results (nearing completion), among many other technical improvements. The team is requesting feedback as they begin planning the 2024 roadmap.

“This project thrives on collaboration, and as we begin plotting our course for 2024, we want to hear from you,” Automattic-sponsored Openverse data engineer Madison Swain-Bowden said. “Have an idea that could improve Openverse? Noticed a feature gap we haven’t addressed? Have suggestions to improve existing features? We are eager to hear all about it!”

Anyone who wants to contribute a proposal regarding Openverse’s future can publish a comment to the team’s blog post requesting feedback. For more information about Openverse’s current projects and those that are on hold, check out the notes from the team’s most recent monthly meeting.