Author's Right, Copyright and Free Licenses for Culture on the Web/Licenses and Reuse/Open Access and License

105. Which museums have adopted open licenses or public domain for reproductions of their collections?
Museums, libraries and archives all over the world adopt open access policies. The Open GLAM survey open access research work (D. McCarthy and A. Wallace) provides an extensive and constantly updated list of Institutions adopting open licenses or public domain: more than 900 cultural institutions have adopted open policies so far. Some of these institutions are the most famous and visited in the world as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian, Paris Musées, Rijksmuseum. In Italy, the BEIC Foundation of Milan, the Egyptian Museum of Turin. In Spain the Spanish National Library (BNE) opened the digital collections (30 million images) in public domain in November 2020. In addition to the examples indicated above, open licenses are an important opportunity also for smaller institutions. Open access is rapidly evolving both in terms of the number of institutions that adopt it, and for the number of reproductions that are progressively published.


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106. Which copyright licenses are adopted in Open Access policies?
Online collections provide information on single photographic reproductions of artworks that are released under Creative Commons licenses and tools, in the public domain or with copyright restrictions. The use of specific wording on the single page allows you to differentiate the approach and to provide precise information to the published photographic reproductions. Cultural institutions that are activating open access policies in their catalogs or online collections for the release of works use various approaches: Rijksmuseum and Paris Musées use CC0, Metropolitan Museum of Art alternates two options (CC0 and Public Domain Mark); the open license CC BY is adopted by Egyptian Museum of Turin; while we find the CC BY-SA (or compatible licenses CC BY and CC0) when the reproductions have been published in the Wikimedia platforms such as e.g. Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons or Wikidata. Some museums such as the British Museum release under a more restrictive license CC BY-NC-SA which does not allow commercial use licenses and is not compatible with open access. In the online collection of the Cleveland Museum the reproductions are released with CC0 or under copyright. Similarly, Lacma (Los Angeles Museum of Art) allows the unrestricted use of reproductions limited to some works (identified as "Public Domain High Resolution Image Available"), excluding others. The Art Institute of Chicago uses the CC0 license, highlighting – also in the Terms of Use – that the user is responsible for requesting and obtaining authorization from third parties, if necessary for the use of the images. The Indianapolis Museum of Art allows the use of only some images of assets in the public domain, and their use without restrictions and conditions, specifying the interesting request to receive a free copy of the publication made with the images used. Therefore the museum online platforms do not have a single formulation, but a specification is affixed to each photographic reproduction.

107. What motivates institution's Open Access policy?
Many museums publish Open Access policies on their sites, and state the reasons: «Open access is a milestone for the Smithsonian in our efforts to reach, educate and inspire audiences», said Lonnie G. Bunch III, Smithsonian Secretary. Europeana, the largest European platform for publishing photographic reproductions with «Millions of cultural heritage items from around 4,000 institutions across Europe» gives many reasons, both in the mission and in the Strategic Document 2020-25: «We make it easier for people to use cultural heritage for education, research, creation and recreation. Our work contributes to an open, knowledgeable and creative society [...] Europeana will enable cultural heritage institutions to transcend cultural and national borders and place their collections in the European context – to be part of the story of Europe».

The Cleveland Museum video presentation Cleveland Museum of Art unleashes major digital change: ‘Open Access’ explains the tools and possibilities for reuse they have made available, and ends with the inspirational phrase «for the benefit of all the people, forever». The National Gallery of Art in Washington refers to its mission of being at the service of the United States through an activity aimed at preserving, collecting, exhibiting and increasing the understanding of works of art according to the best museum and educational standards. The open access policy «is a natural extension of this mission. [...] The Gallery believes that increased access to high quality images of its works of art fuels knowledge, scholarship, and innovation, inspiring users that continually transform the way we see and understand the world of art».

The National Gallery of Denmark SMK focuses on active involvement: «A cultural user not satisfied with being a passive spectator to culture. This cultural user wants to be an active participant and to use culture in his or her own life. And the conclusion is clear: Far more – including those who don’t use the physical museum – use the collections when they can actively select, re-use, remix, and share artworks». The Spanish National Library (BNE) intention is «to promote the reuse of images and to put the digital collections at the service of a confined society, and a cultural and publishing industry with its very limited resources, and to promote the expansion of knowledge».


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108. May we track how content is downloaded and reused?
There are several monitoring tools that can be used to monitor how much of a given content is viewed or downloaded, such as Web Analytics tools and APIs. However, there is still not a good toolset to track content reuse. The Cleveland Museum shares access and download data (Measuring Impact) in real time both from its website and from platforms such as the Wikimedia Dashboard: «It’s exciting to see the exponential effects that Open Access has had on the reach of the museum’s collection!»

Using similar tools such as Live Virtual Dashboards it is possible to monitor trends and access to single artworks. Another example: Cassandra Tool created by Wikimedia Switzerland analyzes how GLAM contents concerning the monuments of the Canton of Zurich are used: which monument interests most, and how many user accesses it has. The Smithsonian has a dedicated page, Open Access Remix, with a list of remix projects to «thanks to our Launch Collaborators, including artists, innovators, educators, technologists, and students, who developed these inspiring examples of what is possible with Smithsonian Open Access».


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109. What are the advantages of adopting Open Access?
Two publications provide relevant information on the benefits and challenges. Effie Kapsalis in The Impact of Open Access on Galleries, Libraries, Museums, & Archives highlights that: «With over a decade of GLAM open access, several trends and insights have emerged for these organizations: While open access may cause a loss in rights and reproduction revenue in limited cases, it can also lead to significant new opportunities in fundraising and brand licensing; Open access results in cost savings associated with rights and reproduction management overhead; Open access allows organizations to realign staff with more mission-critical activities, resulting in more efficient and less costly image management and digitization functions; By furthering research, educational and creative activities, open access also advances the missions of these institutions; Open access significantly increases use and awareness of an institution’s collections; Open access creates a strengthened and more relevant brand.»

Other benefits and challenges are highlighted in the presentation of the Declaration on Open Access to Cultural Heritage at Europeana 2020, by Claudio Ruiz, Andrea Wallace, Evelin Heidel: «Benefits: Goodwill and recognition; Enhanced mission and relevance to 21st century audiences; Increased staff efficiency and better mission alignment; Integration into external interfaces, like Wikimedia Commons; Increased research and new knowledge around collections; Inclusion in Open Educational Resources (OER); Fostering reuse and remix culture. Challenges: Funding, losing revenues and changes in business models: Liability and risk aversion; Bad resolution copies and selling copies of public domain works; Misuse of public domain works; Wrong, messy or inaccurate metadata or information.»

There are many studies in progress and even individual museums are analyzing the results: for example, according to a study on the Rijksmuseum collections, the use of open licenses has increased the sale of images.


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