& Cultural Heritage

A simple, standardized,

legally robust way to grant

© permissions to cultural

works and data

Enable © holders to grant copy and

reuse permissions to the public

6 licenses:

Some grant commercial uses

Some grant derivative uses

All require attribution

CC Licenses

Attribution

ShareAlike

NonCommercial

NoDerivatives

4 Elements

Public Domain Dedication

Licenses

CC Zero =

I want to waive all of

MY rights to a work.

(legally operable)

PD Mark =

For works already in the public

domain.

(legally operable)

Lawyer

Readable

Legal Code

Human

Readable

Deed

Machine

Readable

Metadata

+ Museums

Digital collections

100k+ online image collection

CC BY for images and text owned by

museum; PD for PD works

Most restrictive most open

2004: CC BY-NC-ND

2010: CC BY-NC

Today: CC BY & PD statement

Brooklyn Museum

150,000 images of its public domain

collection released via CC0

Initial hesitation, but marketing dept

argued that “the digital reproduction of

an item would pique public interest in

it, leading them to buy tickets to the

museum to see the real deal”

Rijksmuseum

Move to open aligned w/greater sales

2010: No images available

2011: First set available via CC BY

2012: CC0; launched Rijksstudio

2013: Released all resolutions under

CC0

Rijksmuseum

by Joris Pekel

Promoted museum beyond staff

capabilities

Curried goodwill w/public, creative

industries, funders

Would they do it again? “Yes, but a lot

faster.” – Museum staff

Rijksmuseum

The Concert podcasts and music

library are shared via CC BY-NC-ND

CC as promotional tool; 40k

downloads from 83 countries in first 6

weeks

CC “key” to success; reached

hundreds of thousands more people

Isabella Stewart Gardner

“…making these high-quality

recordings free and shareable is a

major part of why The Concert has

been so successful. In thinking about

the podcast, it was important to us to

really embrace the way people are

listening to music today.”

Isabella Stewart Gardner

100 educational videos via CC BY

160 high res images via CC0

Like BM, moved to more open:

Originally considered CC BY-NC-

ND, but chose CC BY in 2009

Today: CC0

Enabled exposure on Wikipedia

Statens Museum for Kunst

“Use = Value”

“[Our public domain collections] don’t

belong to us; they belong to the public.

Free access ensures that our

collections continue to be relevant to

users now and in the future.”

Statens Museum for Kunst

20,000+ images

CC BY-SA CC0 for all images of PD

works

Uploaded to Wikimedia Commons;

used in 4,000+ pages; 8.4 million

views in June 2015

Walters Art Museum

20,000 cartographic works released as

high resolution downloads via CC0

CC0 for digital reproductions b/c maps

are in the public domain

“We believe our collections inspire all

kinds of creativity, innovation and

discovery."

New York Public Library

Select digital publications, eg. Ancient

Terracottas, Mellini (CC BY)

Teaching & learning resources (CC BY-

NC-SA and CC BY-NC-ND)

Collection guides, inventories, finding

aids (CC0)

The Getty Iris (blog) (CC BY)

The Getty

CC license policy for photos taken of

exhibits since 2011 (CC BY-NC-ND)

Launched with Ai Weiwei exhibit

Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo

followed suit

Mori Art Museum (Japan)

0

3,750

7,500

11,250

15,000

History in the Making Anette Messager Chalo! India Kaleidoscopic Eye Ai Weiwei Medicine and Art Roppongi Crossing 2010

Blog: Doubled since Ai Weiwei

Photography Allowed

Photography NOT Allowed

1.15 million records; 150k+ images

CC0 for metadata records

CC BY for curatorial texts

100k+ images are CC-licensed or

marked public domain

Museum Victoria (AU)

Virtual Collection of

Asian Masterpieces Digital archive of Asian art by Asia-

Europe Museum Network

CC BY-NC-SA for all text and images

on site

130 museums from 35 countries have

contributed masterpieces

Collection Records

MoMA – 125k works

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt – 75% of

its collection

Tate Gallery – 70k artworks

NYPL – 1 million records

Europeana – 30 million records

DPLA– 8 million records

CC0 Metadata Records

All works accessioned into MoMA’s

collection and catalogued in database

Title, artist, date, medium, dimensions

Cultural shift: incomplete & imperfect

records ok

Live performance: “A Sort of Joy

(Thousands of Exhausted Things”

MoMA

“[MoMA’s] data can be and should be

terrain for exploration, forum for

interrogation, and substrate for

creation. There is prose and poetry

and performance to be made from

these rows and columns.”

MoMA

70k artworks, 3.5k artists

Resulted in Tate data usage “in the

wild,” eg. visualizations, artist rooms,

Tate Explorer

Blog series Archives & Access: “Open

data brings beauty and insight”

Tate Gallery

75% of documented collection data

available for download via CC0

Collection data is “the raw material on

which interpretations through

exhibitions, public programs, and

experiences are built.”

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt

Museum

“The release of such data into the

public domain brings closer a future in

which cross-institutional discovery is

the norm.”

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt

Museum

Digital library for all of Europe

16.5+ million objects in public domain,

CC0, or under various CC licenses

30 million records released via CC0

Users can search & browse by reuse

rights

Europeana

58

8 million records from U.S. libraries,

archives, museums under CC0

One portal to search & browse through

distributed resources

App Library – developers building apps

using open data

Digital Public Library of

America

Engaging Users

& Artists

Invites users to tag collection with their

photos from Flickr, Instagram

Users can help identify errors and

submit corrections to collection data

Encourages users to cite objects in

Wikipedia

Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt

Museum

Result: Wikipedia is largest

source of traffic from other

websites – more than FB,

Twitter, Tumblr, etc.

API + Rijksstudio – 177k user

contributions

“Open Cultuur Data” competition

2,000+ images feat. In Wikipedia

articles – 10 mil+ views

First results in Google Image Search

Rijksmuseum

by Frida Gregersen

Bring our collections to the public

Collaborate w/communities of users

Provide framework + resources, then

step back and see what people do

Let go of control over how our

collections are perceived, used, &

create meaning and value to people

Statens Museum for Kunst

Artists Registry for sharing artworks in

response to 9/11

Artists choose how they want to share

their art under CC

Artworks have been used in news

stories and multimedia timelines of

9/11

9/11 Memorial Museum

Sharing

Digital

Collections

Sharing

Collection

Records

Engaging

Users +

Community

CC licenses are robust, built on © law

Clarity and specificity regarding use

Data embedded w/assets; enables

browse/search filters

Minimizes overhead for individual

transactions

Clear way to share PD collections

Promotional & educational tool

Increases reach + impact of museum

Good will w/public, creative industries

Enable unexpected, creative &

delightful results

Lead to refocusing of resources, new

funding + revenue models

Except where otherwise noted: CC BY

creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Creative Commons and the double C in a circle are registered trademarks of

Creative Commons in the United States and other countries. Third party marks and

brands are the property of their respective holders.