[OpenGLAM] Content Trafficking v.3

Laurel L. Russwurm laurel.l at russwurm.org
Mon Sep 16 14:47:25 UTC 2013


Of course making content freely available digitally would be beneficial 
to GLAM institutions, whether they realize it or not.  Doing so is a 
combination of advvertising, outreach and education.  Most people don't 
care about art/artifacts  they have never heard about/seen.  When we 
have seen photos in books or online, we begin to learn about/start to 
appreciate them.  As a child I began to appreciate art in large part due 
to a board game called "Masterpiece" ~ which was my inroduction to van 
Gogh.  Although his work is freely available all over the place, 
including high quality digital scans online, I would most certainly 
visit any of his work in real life at any GLAM I was able to get to.  
But I would never consider donating to a GLAM that hoarded their public 
domain holdings by refusing to make them digitally available.  Culture 
needs to be shared.


On 13-09-16 05:13 AM, Lars Aronsson wrote:
> On 09/11/2013 05:54 PM, Estermann Beat wrote:
>>
>> What I find revolting, however, are GLAMs withholding public domain 
>> works or attaching CC-non commercial licenses to two-dimensional 
>> scans without actually recouping a significant part of the production 
>> costs.
>>
>
> Your mistake is that you believe that making
> content freely available would be beneficial to
> GLAM institutions. If that were the case, then
> they would consider it harmful to withhold
> content. But you should read their annual
> reports: Where do they brag about making
> content freely available? They brag about
> getting large donations and about having
> many physical visitors. But making more
> material freely available is usually not on
> the plus side of their accounting.
>
>





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