[okfn-discuss] (fwd) MPIWG Call for Open Access to Digital Images

Fri Feb 27 14:30:16 UTC 2009

This looks really interesting!

A bit that caught my eye was:

> The document urges curators to refrain from restricting the public domain arbitrarily

This relates to the third recommendation in "Public Interest
Information Policy in Germany":

> Keep the public domain in the public domain. Encourage publicly funded cultural heritage institutions to allow digital copies of their holdings to be re-used by the public. Encourage the adoption of intellectual property law and policy that takes account of public interest, as well as private interests.

See:

  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/17/public-interest-information-policy-in-germany/

It would be great if recommendations went beyond scholarly re-use to
re-use by the public (by using open licenses, public domain
declarations or other legal statements/waivers).

The Flickr Commons project is a good example of this, as is the recent
case where the German Federal Archives made a big donation of images
to Wikimedia Commons (which I saw a presentation on last night):

  http://blog.okfn.org/2009/02/27/open-everything-berlin-cc-salon-berlin/
  http://www.flickr.com/commons
  http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Bundesarchiv

Great to see support from the Max Planck!

Warm regards,

Jonathan

On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 10:06 AM, jonni jemp <jonni.jemp at gmail.com> wrote:
> apologies for x-posting/rehashing
>
> re. opening line of message, Berlin Declaration is here
> http://oa.mpg.de/openaccess-berlin/berlindeclaration.html
>
> jj
>
>
>
> From:     Dr. Christine von Oertzen (coertzen at mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de)
> Date:     22 January 2009
> Subject:  Call for Open Access to Digital Images
>
>
> Call for Open Access to Digital Images
>
> The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG), a co-initiator
> of the OpenAccess movement, has drawn up a set of best-practice
> recommendations concerning the scholarly use of visual media. The
> recommendations aimed at facilitating the scholarly use and publication of
> historical digital images were drafted following consultations with scholars
> and representatives of leading museums, libraries, image archives and
> publishers. The aim of the document is to create a network of mutual trust
> and cooperation between scholars and curators of cultural heritage
> collections with a view to facilitating access to and the scholarly use of
> visual media. The recommendations can be downloaded from the MIPWG website
> which currently features a detailed report on the initiative.
>
> The recommendations were prompted by the barriers encountered by those who
> wish to use and publish images of cultural heritage objects. High licence
> fees and complicated access regulations make it increasingly difficult for
> scholars in the humanities to work with digital images. It is true that the
> digitization of image collections has acted as a catalyst for scholarly
> research. However, archives, collections and libraries differ greatly with
> respect to the question of how, where and on what basis images may be used
> for scholarly purposes. Moreover, their policies in this regard are
> becoming increasingly restrictive, especially when it comes to new
> forms of e-publishing.
>
> The MPIWG drew up its recommendations for facilitating the scholarly use of
> digital images following consultations with international experts which took
> place in January 2008. The recommendations call on curators and scholars to
> develop a mutually binding network of trust. The aim of the initiative is to
> encourage stakeholders jointly to address the current and future challenges
> raised by the digital age. The document urges curators to refrain from
> restricting the public domain arbitrarily and calls on them to accommodate
> the needs of scholars for reasonably-priced or freely-accessible
> high-resolution digital images - both for print publications and new
> Web-based forms of scholarly publishing. It exhorts scholars to recognise
> museums, libraries and collections as owners and custodians of
> physical objects of cultural heritage and to acknowledge their efforts in
> making digital images available. Moreover, it urges them to take their role
> as guarantors of authenticity and accurate attribution extremely seriously.
>
>
> Website:
> http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/en/news/features/feature4/
>
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>

-- 
Jonathan Gray

Community Coordinator
The Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org