Open Culture is part of many open movements, including Open Source, Open Science, and Open Knowledge and encompasses culture as heritage and contemporary creativity. The concept of “open” has served different purposes in a variety of fields, from software to scholarly communications, to research and education, to science and culture. Generally speaking, the notion of “open” in these fields often refers to “making something accessible” without financial, technological, or legal restrictions that limit reuse. The cultural heritage sector currently lacks consensus around a clear Open Culture definition, but there is general agreement that cultural heritage institutions should provide as open access as possible to their collections in the digital environment. In particular, a central tenet of Open Culture is that digital reproductions of public domain works should be made available for free and without restrictions. Open Culture harnesses digital technologies, the web, open licensing, and the public domain to provide free and open access to cultural heritage and enable its reuse. Generally, Open Culture may be understood as the online sharing of digital cultural heritage material with as few copyright restrictions as possible.^[1]

Background

Copyright is the area of intellectual property law that determines how others may access and use the original works of authors (or creators) — works spanning the spectrum from novels and operas, corporate manuals, archives, cat videos, to scribbles on a napkin.^[2]

GLAM is an acronym for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.^[3] It was adopted in the early 2010s by the Wikimedia movement to describe the activities carried out with cultural heritage institutions. The work of the communities has evolved to include other cultural expressions and knowledge activities outside institutions. The does not fully represent the scope of the work people currently do around heritage & culture.

References