It’s International Museum Day today, and at Creative Commons (CC), we are thrilled to celebrate museums under this year’s theme of Museums, Sustainability and Well-being. 

Museums play an important role in sustainable development — they are in fact instrumental in achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — and in supporting the well-being of the communities that they serve. As ICOM states, “museums are an important means of cultural exchange, enrichment of cultures, and development of mutual understanding, cooperation and peace among peoples.”

At CC, we believe in the transformational power of better sharing through open access to knowledge and culture to achieve sustainability and support well-being. By making the collections that they hold as openly accessible as possible for use and reuse, museums can contribute to fostering global collaboration to solve the world’s most pressing problems and enable people to lead richer, more meaningful lives. 

As just one example of the power of open sharing, last year, the UK’s Natural History Museum shared that over 125,000 of the Museum’s digitized Butterfly collection — released to the public domain using the CC public domain dedication tool (CC0) — were analyzed by scientists to understand how animals may respond to climate change. The Museum stated: “…open access digitized collections … allows scientists from all over the globe to be able to more easily use collections, can accelerate research in a more collaborative way than ever before.” This example is emblematic of the immense benefit for society of making information held in museums as openly accessible as possible to the public. It really embodies the mission of museums: preserving heritage, of course, but also enabling members of the public to access and use that heritage in furtherance of the public good. 

Openness is key to achieving global goals, like fighting climate change, because it helps us to collaborate in the face of common challenges. Museums hold the keys to unlocking fresh solutions through global collaboration, and with collaboration comes increased pace, efficiency and efficacy of research, so that more communities have the opportunity to build upon research. 

Museums also serve as peaceful spaces to come together, reduce social isolation, gain better understanding of each other, and improve people’s mental health. Both on site and online, museums can support the well-being of communities around them by providing a public space for cultural exchange and discourse. When it comes to sharing potentially sensitive materials, museums must also account for important ethical considerations. The CC Open Culture Platform working group on the “Ethics of Open Sharing” has identified some of the thorny ethical considerations regarding the opening up of cultural heritage. The working group developed a gamified approach to dealing with some of these to ensure well-informed and balanced decisions. 

Museums educate, entertain, inspire, and bring joy to visitors — they are close to levers that can spark wide-ranging, positive change. By “opening up”, by better sharing their collections with the public, disseminating information, and working together to serve as public forums to hold society-wide debates, museums can empower people, generation after generation, in offering them the resources to engage and participate in civic life, increase the speed of innovation and scientific discovery, and strengthen community bonds for a sustainable future. 

 

Want to get involved? Join us!

• Become a member of the CC Global Network
• Become a member of the CC Open Culture Platform
• Sign up for our Open Culture Matters newsletter 
• Join the #cc-openglam Slack channel
• Participate in CC Open Culture Platform calls — they are announced in the Slack channel and on the mailing list

The post CC Celebrates International Museum Day 2023 — Museums, Sustainability and Well-being appeared first on Creative Commons.

Earlier this year, the European Commission started a new consultation on “The future of the electronic communications sector and its infrastructure.” On the one hand, it’s good that policymakers are examining how to expand broadband access and ensure the capacity of networks continues to expand and support helpful innovation. On the other hand, the consultation is anchored on one particular, problematic policy idea — a new legal right for telecom companies to require bonus payments from content and application providers, imposing new tolls for sending and “generating” traffic. Content and application providers would not just pay for their connection to the Internet (as they already do today), but then have to pay again in order to reach a consumer when the consumer requests data from them.

This sort of approach has long been advanced by incumbent telecom companies, opposed by virtually every other relevant constituency, and rejected repeatedly around the world. It would undermine open Internet access — sometimes called “net neutrality” — and replace today’s well-functioning system of payments with a regulated morass, where consumers will ultimately pay the price. Content and application providers (in particular smaller players) will either be impeded from delivering their traffic at all due to costs, or will pass the costs on to consumers themselves.

CC was pleased to join with the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions and Europeana Foundation in a submission opposing this misguided approach (read the full submission). We highlight the particular the impacts on knowledge and cultural heritage institutions:

“For the institutions and communities we support, these new tolls pose particular concerns. Knowledge and cultural institutions act as repositories for large amounts of data — we are responsible for collecting, storing, and making available all sorts of media and information to Europeans, often under public mandates. While an individual user may not make use of the entire catalog of information, collectively serving our communities can mean serving large amounts of data. Moreover, knowledge and cultural institutions serve academics and researchers who do require access to large amounts of the corpus for their public-interest activities.

We fear that, under this proposal, such institutions could be considered “large traffic generators” and forced to pay new fees. As public serving institutions, they already face significant budget strains, and new fees would inevitably mean limiting the services we provide, and using our resources to bolster the turnover of telecom operators rather than to deliver on our missions.

Yet it is important to note here that a simple carve-out for such institutions would not be sufficient. For one thing, the fees would still frustrate knowledge and cultural production and dissemination in ways that would run counter to the goal of encouraging artistic and expressive freedom, as well as having knock-on effects on us. What’s more, knowledge and cultural institutions may rely on commercial services to host and serve our traffic, and thus to the extent those providers would face new fees and pass those costs on, we would still be impacted.”

As we note in our submission, there are a wide variety of other ways to support open, robust, affordable internet access, including expanding access to spectrum for wireless services and community networks, modernization of universal service funding, and collaborating with knowledge and cultural institutions, which in some cases already work to provide Internet access to surrounding residents. We hope these and other ideas will become the focus as this consultation moves forward.

The post Knowledge & Cultural Institutions Defend Net Neutrality in EU appeared first on Creative Commons.

 

“If you’re considering opening up, start small” says Michal Čudrnák, the Head of Digital Collections at the Slovak National Gallery. When you open up just a small part first you will see what unfolds and can learn in the process what works for your community and what they interested in and how your community wants to use the cultural heritage in your collection. This episode dives into issues of legislation as well as the unique ways public domain material is re-used.

Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Michal works in the Slovak National Gallery on all the digital projects including the catalog of public domain works and other collections in Slovakia, and the main project “web-of-art” which comprises the entire collection.

Michal responds to the following questions:

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Want to hear more insights from Open Culture experts from around the world? Watch more episodes of Open Culture VOICES here >>

The post Michal Čudrnák — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 15 appeared first on Creative Commons.

At Creative Commons, we vehemently condemn the extensive violations of trans rights that are occurring across the world, and the current climate of fear and violence directed at trans individuals. We stand firmly against any and all forms of transphobia, including but not limited to bigotry, violence or persecution based on gender identity, and we affirm that trans rights are human rights .

As an international nonprofit organization, with a diverse global community that believes in democratic values and free culture, the protection and affirmation of all human rights — including trans rights — are central to our core value of global inclusivity and our mission of promoting openness and providing access to knowledge and culture. We believe much of the hate and discrimination that trans communities are facing is connected to misinformation and myths, highlighting the need for greater global access to and better sharing of information, culture and knowledge — and there is no better way to achieve this than to open them up: open science, open culture and open education are the keys to unlocking essential information and upholding trans rights.

Recently, we witnessed [1] book bans and educational restrictions on content related to trans rights and experiences, along with other bans of books related to other marginalized identities. These acts of censorship limit public access to important information, perpetuating misinformation, prejudice and discrimination.

As an employer of a small team of diverse individuals, and a steward of a global community of open advocates, CC is committed to equity, diversity, and inclusion. Trans individuals are an important part of our community, and we affirm our commitment to providing a safe, supportive, and welcoming environment for trans people within the workplace and the broader CC community. We also acknowledge the unique challenges that trans individuals may face in areas such as access to health care, housing and employment, and we commit to advocating for policies that address these issues. We recognize that these attacks on human rights also impact or prevent access to open knowledge and open culture. Unjust laws and acts of censorship and bigotry limit peoples’ ability to share knowledge, partake in our shared commons, and learn — these run counter to our mission.

We understand that language and terminology around gender and identity may be complex and constantly evolving. As such, we are committed to educating ourselves and others to ensure we use language that is inclusive and affirming. We also recognize the importance of legal protections for trans people, and support legislation that upholds the rights of trans individuals to live free from discrimination, harassment, and violence.

As part of this commitment, CC is working to update the codes of conduct to help shape experiences in our community and our team, so they explicitly cover trans rights, are consistent across and surfaced in all CC contexts, are clear in their language and processes, and are adopted by all community and team members.

By reflecting on our actions and prioritizing a culture of understanding and empathy, collectively we have the power to create a world where everyone is treated with dignity, respect, and equity no matter their gender identity or expression.

[1] “Book Bans LGBTQ+ Reading.” The 19th, 2023, https://19thnews.org/2023/02/book-bans-lgbtq-reading/

The post CC Supports Trans Rights appeared first on Creative Commons.

Laksmi says that “open access…makes it possible to collaborate and reconstruct cultural heritage.” In this episode we learn about cultural heritage in Indonesia and how open access has made it possible for organisations to work together and build out data sets and information about historical collections across the country.

Open Culture VOICES is a series of short videos that highlight the benefits and barriers of open culture as well as inspiration and advice on the subject of opening up cultural heritage. Laksmi is a project manager at Museum Pasifika where she has worked with Wikipedia to develop an open access and open data project for the collections.

Laksmi responds to the following questions:

1. What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
2. What are the barriers?
3. Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
4. Do you have a personal message to those hesitating to open up collections?

Closed captions are available for this video, you can turn them on by clicking the CC icon at the bottom of the video. A red line will appear under the icon when closed captions have been enabled. Closed captions may be affected by Internet connectivity — if you experience a lag, we recommend watching the videos directly on YouTube.

Want to hear more insights from Open Culture experts from around the world? Watch more episodes of Open Culture VOICES here >>

The post Laksmi Sugiri — Open Culture VOICES, Season 2 Episode 14 appeared first on Creative Commons.