2. 1. What does it mean for cultural heritage
content and data to be “open”?
2. What are the advantages of openness?
3. What are the challenges faced by cultural
heritage organisations trying to open up their
data?
4. What does the Open Knowledge Foundation
do in this field?
3. What do we mean by content and
data?
1. Content – the works themselves
2. Data – information about the works, often
referred to as “metadata”
4. What do we mean by “open”?
• http://opendefintition.org
• “A piece of content or data is open if anyone is
free to use, reuse, and redistribute it —
subject only, at most, to the requirement to
attribute and share-alike”
5. Common Open Licenses
• Creative Commons Attribution
• Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike
• Creative Commons CCZero
6. Advantages of openness
1. Enriched data
2. Objects more discoverable
3. Artifacts more accessible
4. Preservation
5. Spurs on the creation of new works, tools
and services
7. Challenges to openness in the cultural
heritage sector
• Legal e.g. licensing frameworks
• Technical e.g. standards
• Cost of digitisation
8. What does the Open Knowledge
Foundation do to in this field?
11. Build tools for working with cultural
heritage data
1. CKAN – http://ckan.org
2. Open Shakespeare –
http://openshakespeare.org
3. The Annotator – http://annotateit.org
4. Public Domain Calculators –
http://outofcopyright.eu
5. TEXTUS – http://textusproject.org
12. Promote the value of openly licensed
cultural heritage data and content
13. Moment of opportunity
• Proposed amendment to the 2003 PSI
Directive
• New open digitsation initiatives e.g. Internet
Archive
• Open metadata aggregators e.g. Europeana
• A community of developers with skills for
hacking cultural heritage data
14. Recommended reading
• The New Renaissance Report (2011) –
Elisabeth Niggeman, Jacques De
Decker, Maurice Lévy
• The Problem of the Yellow Milkmaid (2011) –
Harry Verwayen, Martijn Arnoldus, Peter B.
Kaufman
15. Thank you for listening
sam.leon@okfn.org
http://openglam.org
Twitter: noeL_maS
Notes de l'éditeur
In the past, data was kept in physical catalogues, now kept in digital databasesWorks themselves are now digitisedDigitised content and data is importantly different to its physical counterparts – it can be copied at almost no cost at all.
Of course, this only reflects the legal side of openness – you may have openly licensed your data but it may be in non-machine readable formats like a PDF.There is a sliding scale of openness – xml or rdf, APIs with full documentation – so that programmers can build services on top of your data much
Theatricalia – a databasae of past theatre productions – some small theatres ceased to exist and so did their records as a result – Theatricalia the only place that maintained the records
Cost of digitisation – Google Books partnership – PUBLIC DOMAIN content – should it be monopolised?
Bring together organizations active in this area with representatives from cultural heritage institutions
The digital revolution and the internet promises greater access to and re-use of our shared cultural heritage because works and data can be copied at almost no cost at allThe EU may well create a legislative framework in which the data from cultural heritage institutions is treated in much the same way as other public sector information such as transport or traffic information
