Decentralised Framework for Digital Heritage Management: Solid Pods, Blockchain and Token-Based Services for GLAM

Digitisation has given galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM institutions) vast digital collections, yet most institutions still manage access to those collections, their relationships with contributors and patrons, and their physical visitor services through separate centralised systems, each carrying its own cost, liability and administrative burden. This paper introduces the decentralised digital heritage management (DDHM) framework, which allows a GLAM institution to keep custody of its digital assets in an institution-controlled digital vault while using a shared tamper-evident ledger to record every act of access, contribution, funding or admission as a verifiable transaction. DDHM builds on a previously proposed decentralised digital asset repository architecture that combines Solid personal online datastores with Ethereum-based smart contracts to gate access behind token payments and reframes that architecture as a heritage-management tool rather than a technical prototype: the institution remains the custodian of its collections at all times, and every transaction becomes a verifiable service record rather than an entry hidden inside a vendor’s platform. To help museum, library and archive professionals apply the framework without needing to understand its underlying blockchain mechanics, the paper also introduces Token-Based Heritage Services (TBHS), a taxonomy that classifies tokens not by blockchain standard but the institutional service they deliver: access, membership, funding, collaboration, education, conservation and visitor services. Seven illustrative use cases, several presented with service diagrams, show how a single DDHM deployment can support a research-access programme, a digitisation fundraising campaign, a volunteer and community-contributor programme, a schools programme, a conservation-sponsorship scheme, and unified digital and physical visitor services, all governed by the same underlying framework. The paper closes with practical implementation guidance and a discussion of the benefits, risks and open questions that this approach raises for the heritage sector.