itself. Where attribution is prioritised, the data shows UK GLAMS are publishing small sets of data under the Creative Commons BY and BY-SA licences to ensure credits are given while enabling commercial reuse. In any event, the application of any Creative Commons licence requires a valid copyright to subsist in the digital surrogate. This is also true of the Open Government Licence. The application of such licences to digital surrogates of public domain works is neither lawful nor enforceable according to the Intellectual Property Office's own interpretation of UK copyright law.
Many TaNC projects, and wider GLAM projects, connecting collections across the UK, are being framed as revolutionary for their ability to support new scholarship and address new research questions. Their 'public' is revealed to be academic or educational, extending also to citizen researchers. Download and commercial reuse by any public is however prohibited. This scholarly approach to open access limits new knowledge, innovation and engagement with public domain collections, primarily supporting only their study.
Many participants commented that such policies are creating tension with volunteers who freely contribute their time and expect reuse of collections and data they produce or enrich to be freely available. Such policies do not acknowledge what should happen to non-original contributions in which no new rights subsist, such as transcriptions of public domain documents and/or the facts or basic information documents contain. These materials, and digital media generated around them, are communicated to create new rights for the GLAM by which the institution (and the volunteer) is bound. In this way, it seems projects involving the public are also shaping their understanding of copyright, open access and the public domain.
The result is an open GLAM landscape that maintains the status quo. Notably absent are the UK's national collections. Some mentioned many were waiting for a national institution to break rank and adopt a meaningful open access policy. When asked what might help, one participant responded: "Anything that moves the needle would be helpful. But we really need a jump at this point."
5.3. What is the impact on the digital national collection?
The research uncovered various back-end aspects of copyright, open access, funding and GLAM operations that have already altered the front-end of the digital national collection.
5.3.1. The impact of copyright
Interviews revealed examples of commercialisation goals impacting what gets digitised, used for research projects and published online.
Across UK GLAMS, this has materialised as follows:
- Commercial partners are selecting collections for digitisation based on their commercial viability. GLAMS receive copies for their own personal and/or commercial reuse, including for commercial licensing services. Exclusive agreements can be limited (e.g., five or more years), subject to renewal by the GLAM. This can impact what is published, when and under what reuse conditions once the agreement expires.
- GLAMS with commercial licensing services are selecting collections for digitisation based on their potential commercial viability. This can result in digitising and publishing more popular collections and well-known works, while lesser-known collections, works and creators remain undigitised.
