Presentation to the conference 'De nouvelles démocraties du savoir?' conference at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris on 23 October 2018. I share insights into open access policies in GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) around the world, based on a research project I co-lead with Andrea Wallace, Lecturer in Law at the University of Exeter. This ongoing survey examines how GLAMS make their data, and images of out-of-copyright objects, available for re-use. The information is being crowdsourced by culture professionals and is intended to become a useful resource on open access policy in the culture sector.

1. Nouvelles du front:
developing a global picture of
GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris
23 October 2018

2. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Agenda
● About the survey
● Definition of open access
● Scope, method & structure
● Visualisations and insights
● Next steps

3. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
The Open GLAM survey examines how GLAMs
make open access data – whether digital objects,
metadata or text – available for re-use.
● Informal and crowd sourced initiative
● Started in March 2018
● On-going and growing:
30 GLAMs in March 2018 358 in October 2018

4. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Survey authors
@CultureDoug@AndeeWallace

5. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Why we started the survey
● Information gap
○ Lack of up-to-date information on this topic
○ No ‘shared place’ to see/add relevant data
○ Perceived European & North American bias in the field;
strong desire to see a global picture
● To develop a resource for
○ People who want to find & use open content or data
○ GLAMs exploring open access data & policy

6. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Definition of open access
‘Open means anyone can freely access, use, modify, and
share for any purpose.’ (The Open Definition)

7. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Conformant licences & rights statements
● Public Domain Mark
● CC0
● CC BY
● CC BY-SA
● No Known Copyright
and equivalents

8. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Scope
● The survey covers data that GLAMs make available on their
websites and/or external platforms such as Github,
Europeana, German Digital Library or Wikimedia Commons
● The survey only covers digital surrogates of objects in the
public domain, where any term of copyright for the material
object has expired – or never existed in the first place
● Only open access data is eligible (no NC or ND licences)

9. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Method
● Survey data is published in a ‘comment only’ Google Sheet:
http://bit.ly/OpenGLAMsurvey
● Anyone can suggest survey additions/amendments in the
Sheet directly, or contact Andrea or Douglas on Twitter
● We gather information by outreach to GLAMs, Wikipedians,
cultural bodies and interested people around the world

10. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Survey structure

11. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Survey structure

12. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Survey structure

13. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Open GLAM by country: global

14. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Open GLAM by country: regional

15. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Open access scope

16. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Licence types in use

17. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Some survey stats
Of the 358 GLAMs in the survey today:
286 have a stated licence for metadata
64 lack a Wikidata entity
42 have Githubs
201 have data accessible via Europeana & 16 DDB APIs

18. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Policy vs practice
● The survey’s ‘Online Policy’ field links to the most relevant
rights policy and terms of use information that GLAMs
provide on their websites (when available),
BUT
- these pages are often generic and lack detail
- GLAM policy statements are often conflicting,
subject to change and do not expressly disclaim copyright

19. https://medium.com/berkman-klein-center/communicating-use-and-reuse-in-the-digital-
collection-interface-434d970c4d38
Recommended
reading on this topic
Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY

20. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
What’s next?
Continue growing survey by global outreach

21. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
What’s next?
Model and map survey data to Wikidata

22. Nouvelles du front: developing a global picture of GLAM open access
Douglas McCarthy, CC BY
Want to get involved?
Join the survey at
bit.ly/OpenGLAMsurvey
Contact us directly:
@AndeeWallace
@CultureDoug
John Jennings Esq., his brother-in-law and his wife, 1769
Alexander Roslin
Nationalmuseum, Public Domain