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Chart demonstrating the geographical distribution of the 14 art museums and galleries participating in OpenGLAM by continent.
Source publication
Purpose:
In recent years, OpenGLAM and the broader open license movement have been gaining momentum in the cultural heritage sector. The purpose of this paper is to examine OpenGLAM from the perspective of end users, identifying barriers for commercial and non-commercial reuse of openly licensed art images.
Design/methodology/approach:
Following...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... a response to the ambiguous legal landscape concerning images of public domain artefacts, OpenGLAM defines and promotes all institutions that offer all of their images of public domain works without any restrictions, allowing even commercial reuse. Lastly, it is worth noting that although OpenGLAM was pioneered in Europe, by the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands, European art museums at present account for only a third of the total number of art museums and galleries participating in OpenGLAM, whilst outside North America and Europe there has yet to be an art museum or gallery abiding by its principles (Figure 2). ...
Context 2
... given that USEUM's scope is limited to painting, drawing and illustration, priority was given to art museums with a notable collection of such works of art. Moreover, the museums selected give a good spread between Europe and the United States, which is two to one ( Figure 2). Lastly, the deciding factor was to select museums whose case studies would bring to light a diverse range of challenges and also opportunities end users may encounter when reusing open images. ...
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Citations
... Moreover, the field of intellectual property rights management in museums rarely becomes the subject of research. Numerous sources discuss the matter of copyrights to museum collections (Pantalony 2017; Garvin 2019; Benhamou 2019; Guss 2020; Dore and Turan 2024), or the aspect of open policy and access to collections (Arthur et al. 2024;Hoster 2020;Valeonti, Terras, and Hudson-Smith 2020). However, we still lack research and literature on other types of intellectual property rights identified in museums, such as employee rights, employee and visitor rights to their image, database protection, or know-how. ...
... The paradigm level refers to the structural changes and trend shifts brought about by the evolution of major environmental factors in academia and industry, specifically the push for open science and citizen science and the rise of digital transformation and digital humanities. First, the paradigm shift brought about by the concept of open science and citizen science has promoted the collaborative co-creation of multiple actors and the construction of rich value dimensions in cultural heritage information practices (Della Corte et al., 2017;Errichiello & Micera, 2018;Estermann, 2014;Fermoso et al., 2015;Siqueira & Martins, 2022;Valeonti et al., 2020). It has further boosted the co-creation of values for scientific research in cultural heritage domains. ...
Value co‐creation as a research topic has been a critical proposition of interest to a wide range of disciplines. In recent years, the field of cultural heritage has also developed a range of information practices to promote different forms of value co‐creation. While the body of literature has begun to accumulate, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of conceptual foundations and how value co‐creation is implemented in cultural heritage information practices. This paper conducted a hermeneutic literature review to understand and conceptualize the core aspects of value co‐creation in various cultural heritage information works. In particular, this paper provides a research mapping of the genres of co‐creation in cultural heritage information practices, the actors, and the roles played by the stakeholders. Further, this review provides an overview of the dominant value co‐creation models in the cultural heritage field. It distills the drivers of value co‐creation and the core value consequences that arise from a process perspective. Finally, this paper puts forward a thematic, theoretical, and methodological agenda for future work based on these findings. The review contributes to the literature by proposing an integrated conceptual framework that summarizes the core elements of value co‐creation in cultural heritage information practices. The framework also serves as a call for action, providing a general understanding of the conceptual foundation for future research.
... The Rijksmuseum was a pioneer in the move toward open or unrestricted access to digital surrogates in the cultural heritage sector-sometimes referred to as the OpenGLAM movement. From 2011 the museum digitalised thousands of high quality copies of artworks, making images openly available to anyone for download and use without limitations (Terras, 2015;Valeonti et al., 2019). Since then, numerous digital tools, software, infrastructure, and social media platforms have been designed. ...
... Policies soon emerged to make public sector information more openly available (Suber, 2012;Willensky, 2006), followed by steps to capitalise on software development systems to preserve and share data, content and outputs in more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) ways (Wilkinson et al., 2016). While many early initiatives were focused primarily on the sciences and academia, open access to cultural heritage soon became part of this broader open access movement (Valeonti et al., 2019). GLAM leaders were called upon to put "high-resolution digital files of works of art in their collection online, for use by anyone, for any purpose" (Kelly, 2013, 4). ...
... Yet while the GLAM sector views digitalisation as a priority, most museums have only a small percentage of their collections openly available online for general use (Benhamou & Ferland, 2022). Even today as museums try to expose their collections, many still do not fully abide by their open access principles, allowing only a small part of their collection to be accessible for re-use (Valeonti et al., 2019;Wallace & Euler, 2020). Legal issues-including acquisition, copyright, ownership rights, authenticity, access, use and re-use-are seen as the primary obstacles (Dunn, 2020;Garvin, 2018). ...
... Individual canon curation could be enabled through mass digitisation of cultural heritage and the OpenGLAM movement (Terras, 2015;Valeonti, Terras and Hudson-Smith, 2020). However, it is important to note ways in which the selective nature of digitisation and rights restrictions can prohibit the accessibility of digitised resources. ...
... Terras states that digitisation without an open license restricts reuse, and therefore access, despite ongoing rhetoric about the democratising nature of digitisation. (Terras, 2015, p. 741) Not only do such schemes restrict reuse, but they are often created to enable commercial exploitation by institutions rather than support reuse by end users (Valeonti, Terras and Hudson-Smith, 2020). Authors have also acknowledged the ways in which the selective nature of digitisation enables the reproduction of the Western canon in a digital format rather than its dissolution (Hitchcock, 2013). ...
This qualitative study examines the production of cultural memory within current or recently active UK-based DIY music spaces. Utilising a critical archival theoretical framework, the thesis builds upon previous work which deconstructs subcultural historiography and archiving, identifying the reproduction of whiteness, masculinity, and affluence in heritage projects. By focusing on current or recently active communities, the study engages with archives and histories before they are deposited and/or formed, acknowledging the role of labour in and the construction of narratives through archival work. My analysis therefore moves discussions about subcultural archives beyond examination of sources and into a discipline which explores archiving as practice and labour, archives as organisations, as well as the archive as concept.
The resulting analysis complicates the positioning of punk and DIY music communities as ahistorical. I surface underpinning information infrastructures and informal archival actions which enable community building and connection across generations through preservation and circulation of memory. Exploration of the intersection of socioeconomic circumstances and archival traces identifies how ongoing experiences of austerity, precarity and lack of resource negatively affect the capacity to create and maintain archival projects or sources. The contemporary temporal focus of the study enables an extended consideration of the born digital traces and web heritage of DIY music communities, which is particularly timely given the loss of data stored on widely-used digital platforms such as Myspace Music and the deletion of information produced by queer communities caused by corporate moderation processes and algorithms.
... Both museums approach their collections as data in line with recent literature that shows how large cultural heritage databases are used for research, commercial applications and as an economic resource (Padilla, 2018;Terras et al., 2021). The analysis of data in the survey of GLAM open policy and practice (McCarthy and Wallace, 2022) shows that open access policies for more than 1,000 digital objects are only adopted by about 250 museums across the world, a tiny number of cultural institutions, rather an exception in the world of restricted reuse of cultural heritage data (Kizhner et al., 2019;Valeonti et al., 2020). Among these institutions, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Rijksmuseum provide the highest number of records with images (with the exception of museums of natural history), sometimes augmented with bibliographies and information on exhibitions for better discoverability and context. ...
Purpose
Large cultural heritage datasets from museum collections tend to be biased and demonstrate omissions that result from a series of decisions at various stages of the collection construction. The purpose of this study is to apply a set of ethical criteria to compare the level of bias of six online databases produced by two major art museums, identifying the most biased and the least biased databases.
Design/methodology/approach
At the first stage, the relevant data have been automatically extracted from all six databases and mapped to a unified ontological scheme based on Wikidata. Then, the authors applied ethical criteria to the results of the geographical distribution of records provided by two major art museums as online databases accessed via museums' websites, API datasets and datasets submitted to Wikidata.
Findings
The authors show that the museums use different artworks in each of its online databases and each data-base has different types of bias reflected by the study variables, such as artworks' country of origin or the creator's nationality. For most variables, the database behind the online search system on the museum's website is more balanced and ethical than the API dataset and Wikidata databases of the two museums.
Originality/value
By applying ethical criteria to the analysis of cultural bias in various museum databases aimed at different audiences including end users, researchers and commercial institutions, this paper shows the importance of explicating bias and maintaining integrity in cultural heritage representation through different channels that potentially have high impact on how culture is perceived, disseminated, contextualized and transformed.
... Although a lot of historical material has been digitalized, this is often restricted to specific collections or certain document types-the large costs associated with digitalization forces institutions to make deliberate choices and prioritizations. As such, there are structural omissions in what has been digitalized that would bias the results of NDID (Valeonti et al., 2019;Candela et al., 2020;Jo and Gebru, 2020). Despite these limitations, computational and computer-assisted analyses of Gallery, Library, Archive, Museum (GLAM) collections are becoming more commonplace, demonstrating the new possibilities of such analyses (Arnold and Tilton, 2019;Masson et al., 2020). ...
Digitization and digitalization efforts have led to an explosive growth of the number of images that are published, shared, and made available in collections. In turn, this has resulted in increased awareness of, and interest in, computational methods for automatic image analysis. Despite the tremendous progress made in the development of computational methods, there remains a gap between how a person interprets an image and what can be automatically extracted. By considering iconic images as those images for which this gap is most salient, as their meaning goes well beyond what is represented in the visual data, this article gives an overview of the potential and limitations of computational methods for iconic image analysis. I structure this overview by discussing methods that can be used to analyse the production, distribution, and reception of iconic images. Although the majority of computational methods focus on analysing production aspects, there are promising methods for image distribution aspects, whereas methods for studying image reception have received little attention. By considering the limitations of available methods I argue that computational methods can be of use for studying iconic images, but that comprehensive analysis will require methods that incorporate the plurality of meanings an image can have, and temporal nature thereof.
... Розглядаючи повторне використання зображень з погляду кінцевого користувача, сучасні дослідники у сфері оцифрування об'єктів культурної спадщини Ф. Валеонті, М. Террас і А. Гудсон-Сміт (Valeonti, Terras and Hudson-Smith, 2020) виокремлюють кілька перешкод. По-перше, немає джерела, яке агрегує інформацію про заклади культури, що надає відкритий доступ до своїх колекцій. ...
The purpose of the research is to reveal the peculiarities of the digital collections functioning in the field of cultural heritage. Research methodology is based on the application of a systematic approach to the digitization issue’s study of cultural heritage sites and museum practice. The scientific novelty of the obtained results is the issue’s actualization of the functioning of digital collections of cultural heritage in the cultural context, the statement of the digital canon expansion in the field of cultural heritage. Conclusions. It is emphasized that the discrepancy between the scale of digitized content and the real number of non-digitized and unpublished works of culture and art raises important questions about who decides which works will be published, will enter the scientific and educational circulation, will expand the digital canon and will serve as a source of inspiration for the general public. Thus, the range of problems in the development of digital collections and digital content aggregators in the field of cultural heritage becomes evident. Digital publishing platforms should be seen as primary sources that reflect the cultural, political and social issues of the modern era and reveal ontological and epistemic gaps in the perception of cultural, ethnic and social affiliation. The analysis of conceptual and methodological approaches to the development of modern digital technologies in the field of cultural heritage, which defined the digital turn for all modern cultural processes, allows us to understand the basic patterns and trends associated with recording, analysis and transmission of cultural heritage at the present stage. Critical analysis of digital infrastructures enables the cultural study of the digital turn in the field of cultural heritage in order to identify the possibilities and limitations of digital technologies in the analysis, publication and dissemination of textual and visual materials, demonstrating works of culture and art.
... For example, creating digital libraries, collections, and images affects not only the development and construction of the digital libraries, collections, and images but affects the users, user satisfaction, user research productivity, and user teaching and learning(Feliciati, 2020;Green & Lampron, 2017;Dang, 2020;Xie, Joo & Matusiak, 2021).The growth of GLAM Labs is a direct subset of the open access movement. The emergingGLAM Labs facilitate the creation of unique and creative reuse and experimentation with cultural heritage content(Valeonti, Terras & Hudson-Smith, 2019;Glowacka-Musial, 2020;Candela, Sáez, Escobar & Marco-Such, 2020; Mahey, Al-Abdulla, Ames, Bray, Candela, Chamber, Derven, Dobreva-McPherson, Gasser, Karner, Kokegei, Laursen, Potter, Straube, Wagner & Wilms, 2019).Mahey et al. (2019) state "GLAM Labs come in a variety of shapes and sizes. They use experimental methods to make cultural heritage collections available in innovative, engaging and unexpected ways. ...
Diese Dissertation untersucht Geräte, die Praktiker verwenden, um die Wiederverwendung von digitalen Bibliotheksmaterialien zu entdecken. Der Autor führt zwei Verifikationsstudien durch, in denen zwei zuvor angewandte Strategien untersucht werden, die Praktiker verwenden, um die Wiederverwendung digitaler Objekte zu identifizieren, insbesondere Google Images Reverse Image Lookup (RIL) und eingebettete Metadaten. Es beschreibt diese Strategiebeschränkungen und bietet einen neuen, einzigartigen Ansatz zur Verfolgung der Wiederverwendung, indem der Suchansatz des Autors basierend auf dem Benennungsverhalten von Benutzerdateien verwendet wird. Bei der Untersuchung des Nutzens und der Einschränkungen von Google Images und eingebetteten Metadaten beobachtet und dokumentiert der Autor ein Muster des Benennungsverhaltens von Benutzerdateien, das vielversprechend ist, die Wiederverwendung durch den Praktiker zu verbessern. Der Autor führt eine Untersuchung zur Bewertung der Dateibenennung durch, um dieses Muster des Verhaltens der Benutzerdateibenennung und die Auswirkungen der Dateibenennung auf die Suchmaschinenoptimierung zu untersuchen. Der Autor leitet mehrere signifikante Ergebnisse ab, während er diese Studie fertigstellt. Der Autor stellt fest, dass Google Bilder aufgrund der Änderung des Algorithmus kein brauchbares Werkzeug mehr ist, um die Wiederverwendung durch die breite Öffentlichkeit oder andere Benutzer zu entdecken, mit Ausnahme von Benutzern aus der Industrie. Eingebettete Metadaten sind aufgrund der nicht persistenten Natur eingebetteter Metadaten kein zuverlässiges Bewertungsinstrument. Der Autor stellt fest, dass viele Benutzer ihre eigenen Dateinamen generieren, die beim Speichern und Teilen von digitalen Bildern fast ausschließlich für Menschen lesbar sind. Der Autor argumentiert, dass, wenn Praktiker Suchbegriffe nach den "aggregierten Dateinamen" modellieren, sie ihre Entdeckung wiederverwendeter digitaler Objekte erhöhen.
... Many museums and galleries have long relied on image licensing as a way to earn significant revenue from their images [92], either through their own in-house operations [93,94], or through image licensing firms such as The Bridgeman Art Library [95]. Using image licensing, museums have been claiming copyright even on images of artworks that are in the public domain, sparking controversy [96]. As a counter-argument, museums claim that revenue from image fees is vital for their collections [92,97]. ...
... An exception to this is the Open-GLAM movement, which has made digital images of collections' items available with a variety of open licenses permitting reuse. There is some justifiable concern that third parties could mint openly licensed images of artworks as NFTs, taking potential revenue from institutions (discussed in Section 5.1) [96,98]. Therefore, it is deemed necessary to explore whether crypto collectibles impact image licensing operations by crystalising matters on NFTs in relation to copyright. ...
... GAM offered NFTs of masterpieces by Vermeer and Seurat for sale, claiming it would share 10% of profits with the institutions where these works belong [104]. All of the works that GAM utilised for its NFTs have been made available through OpenGLAM, an initiative that promotes free and open access to the digitised collections of galleries, libraries, archives and museums [96]. Pioneered by the Rijksmuseum in 2011 and later adopted by leading museums and galleries, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Gallery of Denmark and the Getty, the core aim of OpenGLAM is to encourage cultural heritage organisations to refrain from adding new rights to images of artefacts, whose original work is in the public domain (i.e., free from any known copyright limitations) [96]. ...
Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) make it technically possible for digital assets to be owned and traded, introducing the concept of scarcity in the digital realm for the first time. Resulting from this technical development, this paper asks the question, do they provide an opportunity for fundraising for galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM), by selling ownership of digital copies of their collections? Although NFTs in their current format were first invented in 2017 as a means for game players to trade virtual goods, they reached the mainstream in 2021, when the auction house Christie’s held their first-ever sale exclusively for an NFT of a digital image, that was eventually sold for a record 69 million USD. The potential of NFTs to generate significant revenue for artists and museums by selling effectively a cryptographically signed copy of a digital image (similar to real-world limited editions, which are signed and numbered copies of a given artwork), has sparked the interest of the financially deprived museum and heritage sector with world-renowned institutions such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Hermitage Museum, having already employed NFTs in order to raise funds. Concerns surrounding the environmental impact of blockchain technology and the rise of malicious projects, exploiting previously digitised heritage content made available through OpenGLAM licensing, have attracted criticism over the speculative use of the technology. In this paper, we present the current state of affairs in relation to NFTs and the cultural heritage sector, identifying challenges, whilst highlighting opportunities that they create for revenue generation, in order to help address the ever-increasing financial challenges of galleries and museums.
... Alongside this increasing digital availability of collections, the Collections as Data movement has gained significant momentum in recent years, largely due to the Always Already Computational project, which ran from 2016 to 2018: 'While cultural heritage practitioners have broad experience replicating the analog experience of watching, viewing, and reading in a digital environment', the project's report states, 'they less commonly share the experience of supporting users who want to work with collections as data -a conceptual orientation to collections that renders them as ordered information, stored digitally, that are inherently amenable to computation' (Padilla et al., 2019a: 7). This project, along with its Mellon-funded successor, Collections as Data: Part to Whole (Padilla et al., 2019b), and the broader OpenGlam movement (a movement to make Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum collections available openly to users), has advocated for organisations to make collections available openly and in machine-readable formats, and explored potential approaches for doing so, as well as the challenges (Fauconnier, 2019;Valeonti et al., 2019). This activity is set amidst a burgeoning context of transnational funding streams such as the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and USA National Endowment for the Humanities call for UK-US Collaboration for Digital Scholarship in Cultural Institutions, which includes focus on machine learning and 'unlocking new data' (AHRC, 2020). ...
With a mass digitisation programme underway and the addition of non-print legal deposit and web archive collections, the National Library of Scotland is now both producing and collecting data at an unprecedented rate, with over 5PB of storage in the Library’s data centres. As well as the opportunities to support large scale analysis of the collections, this also presents new challenges around data management, storage, rights, formats, skills and access. Furthermore, by assuming the role of both creators and collectors, libraries face broader questions about the concepts of ‘collections' and ‘heritage', and the ethical implications of collecting practices. While the ‘collections as data’ movement has encouraged cultural heritage organisations to present collections in machine-readable formats, new services, processes and tools also need to be established to enable these emerging forms of research, and new modes of working need to be established to take into account an increasing need for transparency around the creation and presentation of digital collections. This commentary explores the National Library of Scotland's new digital scholarship service, the implications of this new activity and the obstacles that libraries encounter when navigating a world of Big Data.
