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public and even UK GLAMs that encounter barriers around reuse of the UK's digital national collections.
Finally, non-UK open collections and data are already being ingested into UK GLAM collections for research and other reuse purposes, thereby shaping the UK's digital national collection in ways UK GLAMs render impossible by claiming rights in digital collections.
5.3.3. The impact of funding
Interviews revealed examples of funding, including who can access it and what obligations it carries, as shaping the national collection.
Across UK GLAMS, this has materialised as follows:
- One GLAM abandoned a project because obligations to publish open access increased the project costs specifically related to copyright clearance, making the project impracticable. Where obligations do not accompany funding, the GLAM's strategy is to reserve copyright in digitisations of older materials that it cannot clear rights on.
- Some GLAMs revise what proposals include as project outputs due to open access obligations. This requires "getting creative around what parts are funded, as we would not be able to commercially exploit it".
- Participants noted The National Lottery Heritage Fund's Open Licensing Requirement as a very welcome development, and one unlikely to deter GLAM applications: "Funding is always needed, so everyone will always go for it." Similar sentiment was expressed with reference to the Wellcome Collections funding obligations.
- The research documented a trend of CC BY-NC sculpture images being published on Art UK, including by GLAMs with All Rights Reserved policies. These works were digitised as part of Art UK's Sculpture Project funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and therefore subject to the previous open licensing requirement of CC BY-NC. This trend is represented in the data for the 40 GLAMS assessed as 'Closed by exception' via their most open approach.[1] Without this funding obligation, these images likely would have been published All Rights Reserved.
- Some participants noted that funding obligations carve out chunks of the collections and force GLAMs to be more open. The hope is these obligations could eventually snowball and have a retroactive effect on GLAM practices.
- One participant expressed that open access funding obligations are currently treated as exceptions to a system that plans to remain the same.
- Another noted not having an open access policy in place meant GLAMS were missing out on funding revenues. And not only grants, but other opportunities too.
Within TaNC projects, this has materialised as follows:
- Participants commented that if funding had been available for digitisation, they might have focused on different sets of documents.
- TaNC funding is available to RCIs and IROs, although other GLAMS may join projects as
- ↑ See Section 3.3.
A Culture of Copyright
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