[OpenGLAM] City Archives Amsterdam

Tue Jan 22 22:43:21 UTC 2013

This is a complex situation, and a subject that I have had extensive 
conversations with GLAM professionals around the world (though mainly in 
the US). I am familiar with museums that charge great amounts for images 
and make a very small amount of money from it in contrast to their 
multimillion dollar endowments. I've worked with a small GLAM that can 
fund a part time position devoted to digitization with the amount of 
money they make (say...$25k) from selling image rights, many which are 
public domain images.

Fifty cents is a pretty tiny contribution for the sake of what it is - 
these two institutions I'm mentioning above charge $50-$100+ for images. 
What I think would be nice to see - allow the public access to the 
images, and then upon wanting to download an image, ask for a donation 
to go towards digitization practices, suggested donation 50 cents - I'm 
sure people would donate a lot more that the suggested amount and feel 
less like they're "buying" a public domain image.

As OpenGLAMers it's our responsibility to continue educating the public 
- donors - about the importance of digitization an freeing content. All 
the more reason why case studies are so important.

-Sarah

On 1/22/13 8:21 AM, Joris Pekel wrote:
> Dear OpenGLAM list,
>
> I would like to hear your opinion on the following.
>
> The City Archives of Amsterdam has just published some great results 
> of their crowdsourcing project. Via the webpage velehanden.nl 
> <http://velehanden.nl> (many hands) around 1600 volunteers have 
> indexed more than 300000 archival records from their militia register. 
> The city archive had already scanned the records and now with the help 
> of the volunteers these can also be searched.  (sidenote: the active 
> volunteers could get points that they could spend to access a digital 
> copy for free)
>
> At the same time, it is for me as a normal person not possible to get 
> free access to these records. I can now search very well (and I think 
> I found a record about my great-grandfather there) but I can not 
> access the image unless I pay 50 cents. The records are old enough to 
> all be in the public domain.
>
> The reasoning of the city archive for the paywall is that that by 
> selling these scans, they have money for more digitisation efforts.
>
> Now, this paywall goes against all of my 'open' feelings, especially 
> now the metadata has been crowdsourced and the images are PD. Still, 
> finding money for digitisation sure is a difficult task and new 
> business models still need to be found.
>
> It just feels like such a shame to lock this great material and 
> volunteer effort away from the world, and think about the missed 
> potential for researchers..
>
> Please share your thoughts. If possible, I will definitely adress them 
> to the persons responsible.
>
> All the best,
>
> -- 
> Joris Pekel
> Community Coordinator
> Open Knowledge Foundation
> http://okfn.org <http://okfn.org/>
> http://twitter.com/jpekel
>
>
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-- 
Sarah Stierch
US OpenGLAM Coordinator, Open Knowledge Foundation
http://www.okfn.org
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