Open yet everywhere in
chains: Where next for open
knowledge?
VOGIN-IP-Lezing,
March 16 2023, Amsterdam
Alastair Dunning, TU Delft Library

Hello!
I am Alastair Dunning
You can find me at:
https://akademienl.social/@alastairdunning/
Slides and Text at:
https://openworking.wordpress.com/
2

Head of
Research
Services,
TU Delft
Library
3

Head of Junior
Library
Services, Den
Haag
4

A presentation in three parts
1. Openness in Chains
Laying out some of the
problems associated
with the concept of
openness in the digital
world
2. Painting a
different picture
Showing how
flourishing
organisations still
make use of openness.
In particular, showing
how openness is not an
end in itself, but
related to the notion of
agency (agentschap)
3. Openness in your
organisation
What can information
professionals do so
that their
organisations escape
from the current chains
and reclaim a modified
sense of openness and
agency
5

1.
Openness in Chains
6

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Rousseau championed an
open, natural state of
mankind. To him, society
had become enclosed by
various forms of
monarchical and despotic
rule.
7

"Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
This language of liberty
and openness was often
used in the first days of the
World Wide Web
8

“
“The public good they make possible is the world-
wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed
journal literature and completely free and
unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars,
teachers, students, and other curious minds.”
9
Budapest Declaration on Open Access

“
“We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere
may express his or her beliefs, no matter how
singular, without fear of being coerced into silence
or conformity.”
10

Open Access?
Within the field of scholarly publishing, open
access is dominated by four large companies, to
which universities and others pay millions of
euros annually. Other scientific tools, even if
they born out of dynamic, open, independent
companies, can (and are bought up) by these
big four.
11

Open AI?
“Over time, it has allowed a fierce
competitiveness and mounting pressure for
ever more funding to erode its founding ideals
of transparency, openness, and collaboration.”
12

Open Editing?
Wikipedia, has acknowledged the limits of its
radical openness (the encyclopedia that anyone
can edit) has meant it has reflected existing
power structures in the outside world, thus
minimising content and contributions from
female, global south, people of colour.
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Should we
give up on
the
concept of
open?
14
“Knowledge
is open yet
everywhere
in chains”

2.
Painting a Different
Picture
15

A reminder - previous justifications for openness
openness and
transparency
support
accountability
it enables us to delve
inside the workings of
an organisation or a
piece of code to
understand it better,
detect where things
are going wrong, and
do something about it;
openness removes
friction and reduces
duplication
this is a more self-
interested purpose,
especially relevant in
large organisations
where there’s a need to
break down silos, or in
pre-competitive spaces
where joint activity
leads to joint benefits;
openness enables
creativity and
innovation
with the idea that
people can reuse and
build on existing work
to create new things.
16

Agency
The importance of being able of
controlling your own destiny. For me
the key aspect of openness is that
agency gives the organisation, and
hopefully the individual staff within the
organisation, the ability to control
what they work they are doing, without
an imbalanced reliance on third
parties.
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Case Study 1. GOV.UK - The UK Government Digital Service
2013 :
Spending on external
suppliers to provide digital
projects was ‘expensive and
embarrassing’, with 12
billion pounds for health
service IT systems ‘going
straight down the drain’
18

Case Study 1. GOV.UK - The UK Government Digital Service
2016: “The United Nations
ranked the UK first in the
world for digital
government”
Many things contributed to
this. Agency was one of
them.
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Case Study 1. GOV.UK - The UK Government Digital Service
As a consequence of outsourcing, many IT teams in big organisations have
been effectively captured by suppliers. Denuded of their own technical
capabilities, they have been reduced to the role of contract managers–
buying things in the hope it will fix the problems caused by the last order
of stuff they bought.
Without the skills needed to properly interrogate suppliers’ offerings,
organisations buy the wrong things on lengthy contracts, leaving minimal
room for them to respond when circumstances change. All this is
anathema to designing and running decent digital services or meet user
needs.
20

Case Study 2. Hollandse Luchten
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Residents in Noord-Holland
long suspected that poor air
quality in the area was a
result of the Tata Steel
works in Ijmuiden
But how best to prove it?

Case Study 2. Hollandse Luchten
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Via open innovation methods in
combination with affordable
open hardware, citizens creating
an open data source of air
pollution.
By claiming their agency via open
means. The residents can then
take informed action to solve the
problem

Case Study 3. Masters Theses at TU Delft
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“Users expressed that it's difficult to use
the repository to find inspiration for your
own graduation project, see what reports
are good or not, or to find out what
supervisors look for in a project, or what
projects they usually take on.
After uploading, the entry looks boring,
and doesn't grip the reader's attention.
Furthermore, the entries are not very
visible internally, or externally (like on
google scholar).”

Case Study 3. Masters Theses at TU Delft
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Proposed new design includes:
'Thumbnail' images, graphical abstracts, posters, embedded
videos, and interactive embeds (such as 3D model viewers),
which show what the thesis is about.
One or two sentence 'pitches' under titles that allow users to
quickly assess interest.
Views, bookmark, and download metrics that show how
popular a thesis is; Entry awards; featured theses; and
supervisor highlights make it easier for users to find examples
of good projects.
Supervisor profiles that show all their supervised theses,
some information on what they do, and if they might be
available for supervising your project.
Related theses/supervisors/keywords in a sidebar can help a
user find more of what they're interested in.

Case Study 3. Masters Theses at TU Delft
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Responding to changing user
needs is crucial. This is difficult
with closed systems from third-
parties
We’ve chosen to develop our new
repository open source so that we
have the agency to develop and
respond to user needs

3.
Okay. Openness is
important. How do
we embed it in our
institution?
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User-orientated
Five capabilities for the open organisation
Networking Strategic Vision A degree of financial
commitment
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Technical
Development Skills

Capability 1. Networking
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Institutions have a role to play in
contributing to that governance,
whether as active fully engaged
partners or as more passive
supporters.
Example: Koninklijke Bibliotheek
recently joined Open Knowledge
Maps

Capability 2. Strategic Vision
There’s no point contributing to open national
and global initiatives if you are unable to
convince colleagues at your institution that this
is a good idea
Example: Gov.UK had openness as a guiding
principle.
“We should share what we’re doing whenever
we can. With colleagues, with users, with the
world. Share code, share designs, share ideas,
share intentions, share failures. The more eyes
there are on a service the better it gets - howlers
are spotted, better alternatives are pointed out,
the bar is raised.”
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Capability 3. A degree of financial commitment
30

Capability 4. User orientated
31

Capability 5. Technical skills
32

Head of Junior
Library
Services, Den
Haag
33

Open yet everywhere in
chains: Where next for open
knowledge?
VOGIN-IP-Lezing,
March 16 2023, Amsterdam
Alastair Dunning, TU Delft Library

Credits
Rousseau - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
UK Flag - https://www.hippopx.com/en/the-chinese-national-flag-flag-china-red-banner-m-105497
Ijmuiden - https://nos.nl/nieuwsuur/artikel/2281186-sensor-om-zelf-luchtvervuiling-te-meten-nieuw-wapen-voor-de-burger-of-zoethoudertje
Other photos - author
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