16 April 2024

Making the Business Case for Open Access: How the Royal Albert Memorial Museum adopted an open access strategy for digital collections with the GLAM-E Lab.

16 April 2024 11:00 BST

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Slides and recording

Abstract

At the start of 2024, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) announced a new Open Access Strategy: for the first time, RAMM released digital surrogates of public domain works using the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Like any major strategic change, RAMM’s move to open access required time, careful planning, and collective effort to see it through. It was also supported by the GLAM-E Lab, an AHRC funded project. This talk reflects on the process while sharing the lessons learned from RAMM’s journey. It sets out the research-led approach taken by RAMM and GLAM-E Lab to make the business case for open access, starting with a small set of 63 CC0 images published to Wikimedia Commons. It also addresses the recent Court of Appeal decision in THJ v Sheridan, what it means for copyright licensing services and how the cultural sector can respond by embracing open access.

Speakers

Dr Andrea Wallace, Associate Professor of Law & Technology & Director of the GLAM-E Lab at the University of Exeter.

Andrea and Francesca lead the GLAM-E Lab project at Exeter Law School in partnership with the Digital Humanities Lab and Royal Albert Memorial Museum. Andrea’s research focuses on intersections of art and cultural heritage with the digital realm and digital heritage management. Her research considers the impact of digital technologies on the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of cultural heritage. She frequently writes and presents on open culture and the impact that a claim to copyright in reproductions has on meaningful access to and reuse of cultural heritage in the public domain.

Dr Francesca Farmer, Research Fellow, GLAM-E Lab & Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM).

Francesca’s research focuses on the intersection between technology, law and public policy. Her research considers the impact of technology on privacy, data protection and copyright. She is currently a Research Fellow at the GLAM-E Lab, an interdisciplinary digitisation clinic for smaller and less well-resourced cultural institutions and community organisations.

Julien Parsons, Collections & Content Manager, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM)

He has over 30 years’ experience in British museums, working on collections and interpretation projects. His museum career began following a degree in archaeology at the University of York (1985–88). He has an MA in Museum Studies (University of Leicester) and a PhD in Victorian archaeology and collecting (University of Birmingham). After working at museums in Birmingham, Sheffield and Cheltenham, he joined RAMM in 2004. He currently manages a team of curators, exhibition, digital and project staff who oversee the collection and associated assets and deliver an ambitious programme of temporary exhibitions, gallery displays, artists’ commissions and websites. He was the client’s lead for the redevelopment of RAMM’s permanent galleries that helped the museum win the coveted Art Fund Prize for Museum of the Year 2012. He has published a number of scholarly articles on the history of archaeology and museological topics. He is an Associate of the Museums Association (AMA) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA).