A closer look reveals the UK GLAM sector takes a traditional copyright approach to publishing digitised public domain collections
This materialises in a few ways:
In the global Open GLAM Survey data of 1,208 organisations:
- A majority (73 or 91.3%) of the 80 UK GLAMs release only some rather than all eligible data under open licences or public domain tools. In other words, the data shows 91.3% of UK instances approach open access as an exception to institutional policies that claim rights and restrict access to eligible data. Some of this activity can be directly attributed to funding obligations.
- Of the 10,487,115 open and public domain assets contributed by UK GLAMs, seven GLAMs were identified as contributing 10,409,004 or 99.3% of all UK assets. These include the Natural History Museum (7,131,263), the British Library (1,186,746), the Portable Antiquities Scheme (1,038,191), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (595,140), Wellcome Collection (387,228), York Museums Trust (40,426), and the Royal Pavilion & Museums Trust, Brighton & Hove (28,010). A majority of UK instances (50 or 62.5%) publish fewer than 100 open and public domain assets, accounting for a total of 1,029 assets or 0.009% of the total volume contributed by UK GLAMs.
In the UK GLAM Sample data of 195 organisations:
- When viewed by their “majority approach” to publishing digital collections, 144 or 73.8% of organisations in the UK GLAM Sample operate policies of closed licences or all rights reserved for digitised public domain collections. In reality, this number is much higher. Accounting for all UK GLAMs would reduce the representative percentage of open GLAM engagement in the UK (i.e., both the instances and data volume) to vanishingly small numbers.
- At least 35 GLAMs or 17.9% of the sample maintain technical protection measures to assets published on the website through pay-to-view software, watermarks, account creation, IIIF, disabling download and/or publishing very low-quality or thumbnail images.
The large majority of UK open GLAM instances are local and regional organisations engaging with data aggregators and external platforms
The findings indicate data aggregators and external platforms have been crucial for both asset publication and the exposure they bring to collections. Those provided by Europeana, Flickr Commons, Wikimedia Commons and Art UK can also offer flexibility and advantages that impact how open GLAM proceeds due to the systems and rights statements that shape platform participation, particularly for small organisations. 73 or 91.3% of all UK open GLAM instances rely on such organisations as a primary method of publication, with Art UK alone accounting for 47 or 58.8% of instances. The UK’s largest holders of cultural collections are not open and primarily publish rights restricted collections via their own websites. Two exceptions make significant contributions in data volume: the Natural History Museum and British Library.
