Welcome to episode 11 of Open Culture VOICES! VOICES is a vlog series of short interviews with open GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) experts from around the world. The Open Culture Program at Creative Commons aims to promote better sharing of cultural heritage in GLAMs collections. With Open Culture VOICES, we’re thrilled to bring you various perspectives from dozens of experts speaking in many different languages on what it’s like to open up heritage content online. In this episode, we’re joined by Alwaleed Alkhaja, a copyright librarian at the Qatar National Library. Alweed manages the Library’s open access fund and serves as its representative on the SCOSS Board. Before joining the Library, Alwaleed worked in open access publishing with QScience.com / HBKU Press. He holds a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the Göttingen / International Max Planck Research School, and an MBA from the Alliance Manchester Business School.
Alwaleed responds to the following questions:
What are the main benefits of open GLAM?
What are the barriers?
Could you share something someone else told you that opened up your eyes and mind about open GLAM?
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.
Episodes will be released twice a week until June 2022. Missed episode ten of our Open Culture VOICES series?Catch up here >>
As more than a million Ukrainians flee for safety, the United Nations is calling the exodus Europe’s fastest-growing refugee crisis since World War II (WWII). The war in Ukraine is causing terrible human suffering and death and will impact future generations of Ukrainians. The lives of millions across the continent are now in total upheaval. In the face of the tragic devastation, the question “is this the start of Cold War II or worse yet, WWIII?” is edging into mainstream conversations.
Alongside the humanitarian crisis, the war is also causing irreversible damage to the arts, cultural, education, information, and media sectors. Creative Commons stands in solidarity with Ukraine and supports the brave and selfless individuals, working hard to preserve, safeguard, protect, and share the knowledge and cultural heritage of the Ukrainian people.
We stand beside EU Ministers of Culture and Media who expressed their support for artists, journalists, and cultural and media professionals, who, because of Russian military aggression, are now threatened in their freedoms.
We also agree with the statement of UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, who called for the “protection of Ukrainian cultural heritage, which bears witness to the country’s rich history, and includes its seven World Heritage sites – notably located in Lviv and Kyiv; the cities of Odessa and Kharkiv, members of the UNESCO Creative Cities Network; its national archives, some of which feature in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register; and its sites commemorating the tragedy of the Holocaust.”
We commend UNESCO’s efforts in helping Ukraine safeguard museum collections and cultural property. We also encourage volunteers to help archive Ukrainian cultural heritage sites, for example through this initiative.
At Creative Commons, we believe that caring for cultural heritage is a social responsibility and that it is our collective duty to continue to protect and celebrate cultural heritage and uphold the fundamental right of freedom of information. Information and culture found in galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) empower people by offering them resources to engage and participate in civic life and build a future for themselves.
In 1940, during WWII, US Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish wrote, “Keepers of books, keepers of print and paper on the shelves, librarians are keepers also of the records of the human spirit.”
As the war on Ukraine escalates, the global library community is supporting the appeal from the Ukrainian Library Association to combat dis- and mis-information and provide accurate information to support democracy and freedom of expression. False information and media manipulation can be used to alter public opinion. Preserving and ensuring collections are available to everyone can help manage the spread of dis- and mis-information by making information, knowledge, culture and history available to all instead of warped through revisionist theories.
In the field of education, the Open Education community has highlighted the need for Ukrainian open educational resources (OER) for children and teachers as countries prepare to receive refugees. Helping children get back into school, with culturally appropriate educational resources, will be a critical part of ensuring educational opportunities continue in these trying times.
The Open Access Research community is working to support Ukrainian researchers through the website#ScienceForUkraine: a platform to support Ukrainian researchers with accommodation, research hosting, and funding. One of our friends and partners, Iryna Kuchma (Open Access Programme Manager at Electronic Information for Libraries -EIFL), lives in Ukraine and has bravely stayed behind with her parents. Her inspiring tweets are a mix of reliance, inspiration and the sadness of war.
Researchers in Russia have published a statement against the war with Ukraine:
We, Russian scientists and scientific journalists, declare a strong protest against the hostilities launched by the armed forces of our country on the territory of Ukraine. This fatal step leads to huge human losses and undermines the foundations of the established system of international security. The responsibility for unleashing a new war in Europe lies entirely with Russia.
Together we unite in these somber times. Let us hope for a return to peace and respect for human dignity soon.
The theme for International Women’s Day 2022 (IWD) is #BreakTheBias, a global call to action that asks us all to take action and level the playing field. Whether intentional or unconscious, bias can make it difficult for women (trans, cis, femmes), nonbinary and gender-non-conforming folks to get ahead in life. Discrimination affects all industries, including the open movement.
At Creative Commons, we believe openness can enhance the efficiency and effectiveness in life and business, while also making social processes more democratic, fostering diversity, promoting civil society engagement, including contributions from marginalized and underrepresented communities and groups. That’s why it is key that we, in the open movement, ensure we are centering gender equity in all our work, making it a matter of concern and action, so that we can truly break the bias.
Ahead of IWD on Tuesday 8 March, we took a look back to our ‘Women in Open’ panel from CC Global Summit 2021 to bring to the forefront inspirational words from some awesome women breaking through the barriers and working to make the internet and our global culture more open and collaborative.
Delia: Because we’re here celebrating the women of Creative Commons, and this has been a wonderful thing that we’ve been doing for the past few summits — who is your woman idol or mentor, that you’d want to pay respect to?
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Lila: So Delia, for me, you are like my most obvious answer. I just feel when I was back in the day, you took me under your wing and were just so welcoming and taught me so much not only about how it works in Australia, but how Creative Commons works as a global network. And just really your friendship and your openness… and you’re just like telling it how it is always, no matter what has always, just really impressed me. And so you are a big inspiration and a mentor to me. And I also want to say Delia has been there [Creative Commons] since the very beginning. And I just want to say here in this moment to say that I’m so delighted to know Catherine Stihler, now — I did not know anything about her until she became the CEO. But we’ve been working together, and I’m just so thrilled by her version of leadership, and I’m so excited to see where she’s going to take this organization. I’m really thrilled to have more women coming in and women staying in.
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Kaitlin:This one’s tough, I will say, because there weren’t a ton of women in science under the age of 35, let alone 50, when we were doing this sort of work, I will get to the women mentees—but I also have to say that Hal Ableson, James Boyle, Mike Carroll and John Willbanks were like instrumental in making sure I was prepared for the level of scrutiny of being a woman that was younger going and speaking in traditionally male dominated spaces. That was in many cases, a place that did not always feel safe, and they made sure that I was prepared, that I was supported, and I’m eternally grateful for that. I hope that is not what we need to train others in the same sort of way, but just a huge shout out for their foresight there. I will also say that in terms of individuals in the space, both mentors and mentees Danielle Robinson, who’s Co-Executive Director of Code for Science & Society, where I’m not only on the board, but also now lucky enough to be a fiscally sponsored project. She was one of my former Mozilla fellows and is now leading very authentically an organization that imbues care and openness, leadership and support for a broad variety of projects. And so it’s one of those amazing examples where I continue to learn from her, but it also has come full circle. And I think that is really important as well in terms of looking at ways in which we can pay that forward.
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Jennie: I feel very lucky to have been nurtured by all the women on this panel, as well as by Catherine. I’ve had a close relationship with the first librarian I ever really got to know, who is Jenna Freedman, the Zine Librarian at Barnard College, which is where I first encountered a lot of the free culture ideas that I have spent my career working with… As far as mentors go, Jenna is for ever, but I also really do feel lucky to have been nurtured by all of you. Particularly as somebody who is a younger ED, who was tapped on the shoulder, like “do you want to try a strategy?”, “well do what actually, just do this thing?” And now it’s been a really exciting 10 months, and to be honest, I really see most of my relationships as being a two-way street, like Caitlin said… I’ve had the opportunity and joy to work with a lot of folks within the Library Futures community who are really doing the work of controlled digital lending, or really doing the on the ground work with patrons and with user communities, and getting to know a whole new group of folks… Again, a long way of saying I feel nurtured by most of the people I get to interact with, and I feel like that makes me in many ways one of the most fortunate people within the space.
Creative Commons is thrilled to announce our firstCC Certificatescholarships for our newly launched GLAM course. If you would like to nominate a member of the CC Global Network or Open GLAM community for a scholarship – who has contributed to Open GLAM efforts – please read below.
The scholarship will help individuals seeking to deepen their knowledge about open licensing and open practices for GLAMs, and get CC Certified! The CC Certificate for GLAM is a rigorous, 10-week course, which requires 6-10 hours of work per week. Scholarships are non-refundable. Scholarship recipients must be willing to devote the required time to complete the course.
Scholarships: We are offering 38 scholarships for our 2022 courses. Scholarships will cover 40% of the registration fee, and scholarship recipients will be responsible for the remaining US$300. While scholarships are open to the first applicants (or nominees) who completethis form, we will prioritize granting scholarships to as many countries as possible. Additional considerations:
Applications close on 15 March, 2022.
Accepted applicants will be notified by April and will need to register for their preferred course before30 May, 2022.
The next courses run from 13 June – 21 August, and from 26 September – 4 December, 2022.
Course information: The CC Certificate for GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) is a professional development training for institutions or community groups engaged in cultural heritage. As more GLAMs adapt to increasingly online audiences and users, they often seek Creative Commons legal tools, expertise and community support. Cultural heritage institutions share a common goal with Creative Commons: to make knowledge and culture globally accessible.
In the CC Certificate for GLAM, community members will develop capacity in opening access to cultural heritage. They will develop a deeper understanding of open licensing and copyright considerations with digitization projects, Rights Statements, Traditional Knowledge Labels, working with the public domain, and more.
CC Certificate for GLAM participants will also gain access to a global community of professionals and activists working toward similar cultural and policy changes in their own cultural heritage institutions.
In this episode, CC’s Director of Open Knowledge, Dr. Cable Green, sits down for a conversation with Open Education Advocate, Dr. Angela Haydel DeBarger. Angela is a Program Officer in Education at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Her portfolio addresses Open Education, with the aim of democratizing knowledge, creating inclusive and engaging experiences for learners, and advancing racial equity in education systems.
Previously, Angela served as senior program officer for Lucas Education Research at the George Lucas Educational Foundation, where she led elementary and middle school project-based learning initiatives. From 2002 to 2014, she worked as an education researcher at SRI International. Her research focused on improving classroom pedagogy, specifically assessment strategies, to promote student learning and engagement in science.
Angela has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Stanford University, a master’s degree in psychology from the University of Michigan, and a doctorate in educational psychology from Stanford University. She is a native Californian and enjoys spending time with her two boys.
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Creative Commons is thrilled to announce our first
