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    • external platforms (‘UK GLAM Sample’);[1]
    • A survey of the copyright and open access policies of 63 GLAMs from the UK GLAM Sample (‘UK GLAM Policies’);[2]
    • 30 one-hour interviews with TaNC project investigators, UK GLAM staff, external platform staff and open GLAM advocates;
  • A review of case law and policy developments in the United Kingdom, the United States and the European Union; and
  • A literature review of scholarly writing on copyright and open access to digital collections.

1.4.1. Data sources, collection and scope

All surveys adopted a user perspective in reviewing and extracting publicly available information from GLAM websites and external platforms. For the purposes of data collection, this involved taking on the role of a user and the ways in which they encountered rights information on a given website.

Open GLAM Survey
Managed by Douglas McCarthy and Dr Andrea Wallace, the Open GLAM Survey is an ongoing informal survey of open access policies and practices in the global GLAM sector. It collects all known instances of open collections published online by GLAMs and other organisations.[3] This involves personally reviewing GLAM websites, data aggregators and other platforms on a periodic basis and manually updating the Google spreadsheet.[4] As of 7 October 2021, the survey featured 1208 instances of open GLAM, 80 of which are in the UK.

UK GLAM Sample
Created for this report, this sample replicates and expands the Open GLAM Survey data extraction and methodology to include a range of GLAMs across the UK and new data points. The initial sample of 350 organisations included Independent Research Organisations (IROs) and Research Centre Institutes (RCIs), GLAMs associated with TaNC Foundation and Discovery projects, UK GLAMs in the Open GLAM Survey, and other UK GLAMs and related organisations. An initial review was performed to identify and remove organisations outside the scope of inquiry (e.g., no permanent collections). The final sample included 195 organisations.

From the final sample, 24 are IROs (all RCIs were removed). Another 32 are Universities (including GLAMs within universities). This brings the total number of organisations eligible for AHRC funding to 56 (or 28.6%). The remaining 140 include public and private GLAMs at national, regional and local levels (e.g., councils, historic buildings) and research initiatives or data aggregators (e.g., Portable Antiquities Scheme, Culture Grid, Archaeology Data Service).[5] Organisations are distributed across the UK as follows: Channel Islands (1 total); England (154 total); Isle of Man (1 total); Northern Ireland (5 total); Scotland (28 total); Wales (6 total).


  1. Appendix 1. UK GLAM Sample, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6242179
  2. Appendix 2. UK GLAM Policies on copyright and open access, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6242559
  3. For more information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15U__Z50WCUM_OWQ9HKLvLMlkcMoCN68FLVl9OKJQ8yY/edit
  4. http://bit.ly/OpenGLAMsurvey
  5. The full list is available in Appendix 1.
A Culture of Copyright
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