[open-heritage] Open data from cultural heritage organisations?

Mon Nov 22 23:44:37 UTC 2010

Hello!  Mixing and matching emails a bit...

On 20/11/2010 17:05, ianibbo at gmail.com wrote:

 > Deffo up for helping out assemble the list... Mia is the person to ask
 > on the museums API front, and I'll happily do a spot on the open mic
 > next friday asking for datasets and/or opinions.

With my MCG hat on - the open mic session at UKMW10 is full now but 
maybe I could sneak in a one-line shout-out to direct people to talk to 
you.  With my linking-museums hat on, I'm more than happy to link over 
to things from http://museum-api.pbworks.com/

On 21/11/2010 18:32, ianibbo at gmail.com wrote:
 > One of the things I'm interested in is not throwing the baby out with
 > the bath-water (As it were). I think both the cultural and bib domains
 > have a long and proud history of sharing data in a time that pre-dates
 > many of our newer licences. Mostly, I think thats because these
 > domains operate at a level of implicit trust and openness that negate
 > the need for licenses in the normal day to day activities of cultural
 > institutions. In many cases, I think the cultural institutions just
 > see the extra licensing issues as a headache that simply doesn't need
 > to be solved for the domain. I'm not sure thats an accurate
 > perspective, but it's one we need to develop good answers for.

I'd say there's quite a bit of truth in all of that.

I've tried to get licences put on data available at work, but didn't get 
one in the end as it was felt the pain (and probable expense) of getting 
a licence worked out wasn't worth it.

I know a clear licence is something developers often request but those 
requests need to be more visible at the higher levels of management in 
organisations, and in these days of cuts you probably also need to help 
make a case of ROI on any investment in clarifying licences.

It's worth noting that museums can't always give clear licences even if 
they want to - they don't always have full reproduction rights for their 
objects, though they should usually have them for catalogue data and 
interpretative material.  Objects that aren't on display won't always 
have gone through rights clearance, and it can take days to resolve them 
for a 20th century object.

Releasing content for commercial re-use is also problematic for some 
museums - it's one reason museums don't have more material on Wikipedia.

cheers, Mia