About the Book
This practical and explanatory guide for library and cultural
heritage professionals introduces and explains the use of open licences for
content, data and metadata in libraries and other cultural heritage
organisations. Using rich background information, international case studies
and examples of best practice, this book outlines how and why open licences
should and can be used with the sector's content, data and metadata.
Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage digs into
the concept of 'open' in relation to intellectual property, providing context
through the development of different fields, including open education, open
source, open data, and open government. It explores the organisational benefits
of open licensing and the open movement, including the importance of content
discoverability, arguments for wider collections impact and access, the
practical benefits of simplicity and scalability, and more ethical and
principled arguments related to protection of public content and the public
domain.
Content covered includes:
- an accessible introduction to relevant concepts, themes, and
names, including 'Creative Commons', 'attribution', model licences, and licence
versions
- distinctions between content that has been openly licensed and
content that is in the public domain and why professionals in the sector should
be aware of these differences
- an exploration of the organisational benefits of open licensing
and the open movement
- the benefits and risks associated with open licensing
- a range of practical case studies from organisations including
Newcastle Libraries, the University of Edinburgh, Statens Museum for Kunst (the
National Gallery of Denmark), and the British Library.
This book will be useful reading for staff and policy makers across the gallery, library, archive and museum
(GLAM) sector, who need a clear understanding of the open licensing
environment, opportunities, risks and approaches to implementation. This includes
library and information professionals, library and information services (LIS)
professionals working specifically in the digital field (including digital
curation, digitisation, digital production, resource discovery developers). It will also be of use to students of LIS Science, digital curation, digital humanities, archives and
records management and museum studies.
