The revolution starts here: open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the UK

A report was released this week that is the single most important piece of research conducted on the subject of copyright and cultural heritage in the UK.

Conducted by Dr Andrea Wallace this work needs to signal the start of an evolution in practice for UK museums, libraries and archives with a revolution in access and re-use for the general public.

As the report states, we need policy that breaks down "the barriers existing between the UK’s outstanding cultural collections, including public access to and reuse of them".

Research with this massive depth of evidence and with such a clear mandate for action is rare. The UK has generally lagged behind many nations in implementing the opportunities that are offered by giving Open Access to their collections (with the Natural History Museum and British Library as possible exceptions).

This report calls upon the Towards a National Collection (TaNC) programme to fill the gap in leadership and to influence future policymaking. What is exceptional in this report is the mapping of the areas where real policy progress can be made by identifying the barriers that reinforce a culture of copyright around the UK’s cultural heritage collections in the public domain, as the report states "quite literally, at the public’s expense"

I fully endorse this research, its findings and its recommendations.

Having engaged in research in this area since the turn of the Millenium (see page 9 of the report), I can state categorically that there has never been such a clear evidence base or such a critically astute analysis of the data (with a review of relevant case law and policy development) than is provided here. Including: 

• A dataset of 195 UK GLAMs containing information on online collections, rights statements and reuse policies, technical protection measures, publication platforms, open access engagement, commercial licensing practices, data volume and other data points;
• An in-depth review of the rights statements and reuse policies of 63 GLAMs selected from that sample;
• 30 one-hour open-ended interviews with TaNC project investigators, UK GLAM staff, external platform staff and open GLAM advocates;

I hope this research is heeded and action ensues.

The key recommendations are:

• Take a position that no new rights arise in non-original reproduction media generated around public domain works
• Adopt an open licensing requirement for future UK digital collections research infrastructure across TaNC, AHRC and UKRI
• Expand access to funding and programmes for community support
• Coordinate with other key UK actors to align on open access
• Coordinate with key UK actors to develop a sustainable open access programme with a central support point
• Improve messaging around open access
• New research on open access and future-proofing.

The first recommendation is vitally important. For open access and all the benefits that can accrue from this then we should take the wholly sensible approach that no new rights arise in non-original reproduction media generated around public domain works.

Go read this ground-breaking, germinal work here: 

Andrea Wallace, 'A Culture of Copyright: A scoping study on open access to digital cultural heritage collections in the UK' (Towards A National Collection, 2022), CC BY 

Declaration of interest: I was a peer reviewer on this report.