So begins Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (1813).

And so continues Lizzie Bennet, main character of YouTube show The Lizzie Bennet Diaries (Su, 2012), holding up a pink T-shirt with the quote across the front and back.

The works of Jane Austen (1775–1817) are a great example of heritage material, in this case 19th-century literature that spans the centuries and continues to spark the creative minds of today. In recent years her works have been revamped and adapted for a variety of new and old media. New adaptations may include zombies (Grahame-Smith and Austen, 2009) or social media (Su, 2012), but they acknowledge that the words Austen wrote at her portable writing desk 200 years ago (Welland, 2008) are still relevant today.

Galleries, libraries, archives and museums (collectively known as GLAM institutions) from around the world are tackling similar questions. Do people still need us? Does anyone care about heritage? Do our activities have any impact on society? This is clearly exemplified by the 2017 Impact Playbook by (as they style themselves) Europeana and friends (Verwayen, 2017), and cemented in every conversation I have ever had with heritage professionals. The worry that underlies these questions is often at the forefront of our minds, but the answers are not as simple as we would like them to be. Digitisation and digital media are not the great solutions we once hoped. There is more to it than that, as we shall see throughout this book.

I have been inspired to write this book by the students and heritage professionals who have followed my courses or taken a workshop with me on the theoretical aspects of heritage openness or the practical aspects of working with heritage data. It is always such a joy to watch as people overcome their apprehension of technology and successfully produce a ‘Hello World’ message on the screen, and then go on to present data in their own way from different sources.