wider economy than licensing images at the point of access. Open access must be seen and embraced as a good commercial decision.
Getting senior management on board. Open GLAM participation often stems from bottom-up and community-led organising. There is a huge opportunity to create a shift across the sector by getting senior management on board with the convening power and lobbying effort to support sustainable change. The UK sector could lead on new strategic thinking around open access as being a central part of the institution’s mission and necessary for its relevance, brand value and long-term survival.
Shifting focus to digitised assets for public reuse. Participants expressed desires to rethink digitised assets themselves and how to make them available for reuse. This requires shifting the focus to the public domain, what that includes, and whether it is appropriate for digitisation, how it should be digitised, and other technical and qualitative questions. The audiences will follow. As one participant noted, “this will enable new forms of scholarship and research because everyone can work fast and loose”.
5.4.2. An opportunity to shape future knowledge(s) and lead on open GLAM
In addition to the new research made possible by open access, there are opportunities to shape future knowledge(s) and become a leader on open GLAM.
Participants raised interests with respect to:
- Technology. What are the ways technology can achieve the things GLAMs want or perceive copyright to achieve (i.e., best practice around attribution and integrity)? How can interfaces: support high quality display and downloads with rich metadata and cataloguing information; make collections display and management more efficient for GLAMs; collect information on reuse at the point of download; educate the public around rights, reuse and the public domain; support voluntary donations, reasonable service fees or financial kickbacks to the GLAM?
- Digital humanities. What is the role of research potential, digital humanities, and networked interoperability in this and the desire for open access? What existing and new scholarly fields can digital collections enrich and inform?
- Understandings of ‘national’ in a digital realm. How does a digital national collection erode traditional borders and access barriers, particularly with respect to open access? How can digital collections outside the UK be networked with those in the UK to enrich the UK’s own national collection, and vice versa?
- Digitalisation. How can collections speak to each other through open access and beyond the confines of institutional lenses? What roles might the public and the commercial sector play in the digitalisation of the public domain, and in the enrichment of GLAM collections?
Many presented this moment as an opportunity for the UK to step forward and become a world leader on open GLAM. Participants raised new research is urgently necessary on:
- New questions arising from open GLAM. Digitisation, open access and even just digital access can raise urgent questions related to cultural sensitivity, decolonisation, contract law,
