Cultural heritage institutions have been doing significant work on digitization for the last twenty years. The results of those efforts are now starting to pay off, with more institutions adopting open access policies to share that digitized heritage with the world. However, as the survey by Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace showed, there is no consensus on what “open” and “open access” means. There are also some fundamental considerations that need to acknowledge the complexities of managing cultural heritage and knowledge. Also, for those institutions that are less well resourced, more guidance is needed on how to take actual steps on enacting open access for cultural heritage.
Creative Commons and other partners decided to step in to support some conversations on how to ethically practice Open Access. For that, we are publishing a research paper on “Critical Open GLAM”, that provides the research-based evidence to serve as a fundamental piece for building a Declaration on Open Access for Cultural Heritage.
In this session, we will review the key topics that we expect to be included in the Declaration, including:
- The Legal Foundations of Open Access for Cultural Heritage
- New Areas of Focus for Open Access for Cultural Heritage
- A Human Rights Perspective for Open GLAM
- Copyright & Open Licensing
- Accessibility
- Traditional Knowledge
- Privacy
- Ethical considerations for Open Access
In this session, we will walk through the arguments we developed to inform policy makers and advocates that work with or within cultural heritage institutions. We expect that the Declaration will provide an actionable framework to inform policies in an evolving ecosystem, where best practices will change as technologies and communities change.
We will also inform people in this session how to provide comments and feedback, and engage with the Declaration in different ways.
