Building interoperability across borders: a linked open metadata framework for an ASEAN GLAM aggregation platform

Abstract This study develops and evaluates an integrated Linked Open Metadata (LOM) framework for an ASEAN Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums (GLAM) aggregation platform. Using a qualitative, exploratory design with a documented coding protocol, the study synthesises practices from Europeana, the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), and Trove, and contextualises them within ASEAN’s socio-technical landscape. A hub-and-spoke prototype was built with a curated set of 100 records from ten ASEAN member states, aligned to Dublin Core, EDM and CIDOC CRM, exposed via OAI-PMH, and evaluated using a Normalised Open Access Performance Index. Results show functional OAI-PMH compliance, a 25 percentage-point improvement in metadata alignment accuracy after semantic enrichment, and demonstrable cross-border discoverability across four languages. Findings position aggregation as a socio-technical governance problem and provide a transferable framework for regions with heterogeneous institutional capacity and multilingual heritage descriptions.