3. Open GLAM in the UK, and globally
“Our images now appear in journal articles, reports and random places as purely illustrative… we’ve seen them printed out and posted on school walls, or on birthday cards and other places. We no longer collect examples because there are too many!”
3.1. Introducing the data
Before discussing the data in more depth, the following reminders may be helpful.[1]
First, the starting point of data collection is whether digital surrogates of public domain works are made available online.
Second, ‘open’ policies and licences refer to only those which permit commercial use of materials.
Third, the report follows the UK Intellectual Property Office’s position: no new rights arise in faithful reproductions of public domain works. Based on this, the following categories are useful to define:
- Public domain compliant assets are digital media published using public domain or CC0 tools. Under the UK IPO’s position, these tools and their application comply with UK law;
- Open compliant assets are digital media published using open licences, such as CC BY, CC BY-SA, or the Open Government Licence. Under the UK IPO’s position, these licences are misapplied and do not comply with UK law.
The figure 4 diagram illustrates where these tools and licences fall along the spectrum of rights and reuse.
Fourth, ‘all eligible data’ describes when GLAMs release all digital surrogates of public domain works under open licences and public domain tools. By contrast, ‘some eligible data’ describes when GLAMs release some digital surrogates of public domain works under open licences and tools on an individual project or output basis.
Fifth, data analysis should be seen as a baseline discussion or an ‘at least’ approach to quantifying digital collections and engagement with open access. There are many reasons for why data may vary, even within a given GLAM’s approach.[2] In reality, this is representative of the user experience when searching online for copyright policies and digital collections available for reuse.
Sixth, ‘instance’ refers to an institution; ‘volume’ refers to an amount. These are mutually exclusive. Importantly, volume does not imply unique assets. The same asset or group of assets may appear more than once if the institution has shared them via two or more platforms.
