You are hereLegal and Business Model Barriers to Collaboration
Legal and Business Model Barriers to Collaboration
The Recommendations from last summer's GLAM-Wiki meeting in Australia (http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM-WIKI_Recommendations) identify a host of legal and bussiness issues that could be addressed by the two communities. Practical resolutions of some outstanding differences, for example around IP practices, may indeed be essential to a broader acceptance of a model of integration between museum and Wikipedia resources to gain wide acceptance. Identifying approaches to these matters that have worked in similar contexts in the past may help resolve the differences.
David Bearman
When will there be a museums.google.com website that includes objects in collections for all museums that wish to participate, like books.google.com? I guess when Google sees the potential for enough advertising revenue. But this would be a wonderful resource that I believe only Google has the clout and possible motivation to produce in practice. Then items in this resource could be referenced from Wikipedia in the same way that books can be referenced at the moment. I guess museum objects need an equivalent of a DOI or ISBN for global access too. Who has the political clout and motivation to do this? I guess ICOM is the obvious possible candidate if a suitable champion could be found.
Just some wacky ideas. Let's see if we are anywhere near it ten years hence.
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Jonathan Bowen
http://www.jpbowen.com
Museophile Limited
A useful thread. It's important for all of us not to get too hung up on the value of images. While costly to produce, museums would for the most part agree that it's the rare digital image that has commercial value--although we prefer to charge commercial publishers to use them and to discount non-profit ones. The real value is in the complete object record: "tombstone" information, physical attributes, condition, publications and comparable works, provenance, and the like. We would think it best to create these datasets on museum websites and then find appropriate ways of making this information linked to by Wikipedia--rather than using Wikipedia as our primary repository for this research.
Discussing legal & business model barriers to collaboration proves to be serious business :).
So i expect the upcoming workshop on collaboration between museums and wikipedia also to become serious business as well.But as it is in the US, wouldn't it be better to rephrase to legal & business model challenges :).
To not overcomplicate the discussion on legal barriers and business model barriers, i would like to emphasize on the “easy category” of art works, those that are in the public domain.
In december i was at the DISH Preconference meeting on Public Domain Charter and Europeana. Europeana & the European Commission promote the idea that Public domain material should be and should remain in the public domain. There seem to be different conceptions of what Public domain is (should be) in the USA and in Europe. The concept of public domain is much stronger in the USA.
But many museums in Europe aren't very enthousiastic supporters this proposed charter and the idea of releasing their (digital) material to the public domain and collaborate with the “majors of the webs” like wikimedia/pedia and Europeana. The proposed public domain charter is still under construction/in discussion. Within Europe there is also the Commonia network (http://communia-project.eu/) that has written the public domain manifesto (http://publicdomainmanifesto.org/ )!
The main objectives of museums are financial and psychological. There seems to be a fear that museums will that museums will loose money/income if they set their works of art free. Museums make money by selling digital reproductions to publishers, public, .... . But there also is a psychological barrier in the sense that museums are reluctant to what is regarded as loosing control over their collections. The objectives even seem to relate to publishing only as low-resolution.
So i wonder if this is the case as well in the USA.
To me the experience of last december raised some questions. I hope some of these questions, will be discussed also in Denver and maybe there will bes ome answers :
My organisation, the DEN foundation (http://www.den.nl/english) has published in cooperation with Knowlegdeland, a research report on business model innovation for cultural heritage. The two objectives of this study were:
1. To provide insight into the choices facing the heritage sector in the digital age.
2. To provide tools that enable heritage institutions to make well-grounded decisions regarding their role(s) in the digital age.
This study is also translated in english and is available for download/reading (http://www.den.nl/english, scroll down to bottom of page)
At the Dish2009 conference keynote speaker Alex Osterwalder spoke about business model innovation. You can watch his keynote here: http://www.dish2009.nl/node/65 (scroll down to Alex Osterwalder)
Sorry for this LONG contribution
Annelies, your questions on business models and reliance on licensing revenues are quite good, and I hope we get to discuss specific answers.
David, as I understood it, Annelies meant that some European institutions in her experience are *not* happy to have images of their collections appear online, even in cases where there is no clear financial reason for that concern.
Please say more about what aspects of Wikimedia's current stance on images do not encourage museums to cooperate. Do you not feel that the GLAM recommendations include encouraging ideas?
Annalies is correct that many, possibly most, European art museums and many, though probably not most, US ones, are resistant to sharing images online. To some extent they believe they make money licensing images, though in reality this income is trivial if not non-existent. To some extent they feel they are responsible for administering the moral rights of the artists - in this respect they have a case that is not well understood outside their world: they need to maintain trust with contemporary artists who look at the way they manage the works in their care.
More problemmatic at the moment is the perception in the museum community that the Wikimedia Foundation through its actions has encouraged a volunteer who engaged in the theft of intellectual property from the NPG, and has refused to take it down when asked. Since the NPG is willing to provide reasonable resolution images for Wikipedia and since they are a major actor on the world art museum stage, this situation has created widespread distrust of Wikimedia.
As someone who has worked for the past 20 years to make museum content more widely available online, with considerable success, I am personally dismayed by the impasse that seems to have been created, quite unnecessarily in my view. I can't see any advantage to Wikimedia from the stance it has taken and lots of negatives with respect top the cultural heritage community.
The GLAM recommendations (for GLAMs and for Wikimedia) are philosophically at odds with each other. It may be more useful to work towards concrete things we could agree on - specific minimum resolutions of images that museums could provide and Wikimedia would use, rather than trying indirectly to get the other community to agree to 'principles' it doesn't accept, as in "Remove claim of copyright over scans/photographs of Public Domain content as per the "originality" principle."
David Bearman
These are wonderful questions! Thank you! Here are some expansions on them:
Could the museum participants help facilitate this conversation by bringing along some figures? For example, if it turns out that museums only make a smidgen of money on digital reproductions, then sacrificing that ability should not cause much handwringing. On the other hand, if it is a substantial portion of their revenue, we Wikimedians need to know that we cannot ask them to sacrifice it without proposing something significant to replace it.
What kind of digital materials are we actually talking about here? Where is the overlap with Wikimedia? Are there ways in which Wikimedia could actually facilitate the making and selling of these materials?
In what ways do the goals of Wikimedia and museums overlap? Are we both trying to share knowledge and, dare I say it, beauty? If so, can we still work together even if some of other goals do not overlap so well?
Could some of the museums bring along their mission statements, 10-year plans, etc. so that we can see the kinds of projects they want to engage in and how we might be able to help?
Yes indeed these are all very important questions - and ones that Wikipedians have been raising with museums for a few years. Sometimes we do it directly in fora like this conference, other times Wikipedia is the elephant in the room of executive meetings....
With regards to the way the Public Domain is treated in museums - especially Art museums in America - can I recommend this fantastic recent paper by Kenneth Crews of Columbia University entitled: "Control of museum art images: the reach and limits of copyright and licensing"
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id...
It is a comprehesive survey of the practices and theories (legal and business) behind them in relation to the use of Public Domain works of art online by museums. Very good reading!
Liam, while you may think the article makes good reading, this position is not generally acceptable to art museums, so it would be useful for you and your colleagues to listen carefully to them rather than try to browbeat them with Ken Crews' legal views.
Museums are, in fact, quite happy to have images of works from their collections, when correctly identified and acknowledged, appear on the web in formats that don't threaten their financial interests. This is actually not a hard thing to do and it would be useful if at the end of the day on April 13 we found a way fo Wikimedia to recognize that an encourage it. I am sure museums would respond positively. The current stance of Wikimedia, and that article, does nothing to encourage museums to cooperate.
Hopefully some suggestions about what is accetable will come from museums and we can find common ground.
David Bearman
Back from holiday and having had no access to a computer or internet the last few weeks i am glad with the response. Though alas no museum has responded. And it is all about the musea and their collections!
I agree with David that the workshop should focus on finding the common ground for cooperation, that would in the end benefit the public, the musea and wikimedia. An approach could be to identify the barriers (financial, psychological, etc) and try to find solutions for that.
That is why i raised the questions. An if indeed a financial barrier exists (or maybe doesnt exist as David said income could be trivial or non-existant ) the answer of Wadwitz of wikimedia leaves a lot of room for museums: "On the other hand, if it is a substantial portion of their revenue, we Wikimedians need to know that we cannot ask them to sacrifice it without proposing something significant to replace it."
Anyway looking forward to the (live) discussion
( and clearly not completely adjusted again to the online world ;). I want this comment at the end of the discussion, but alas)
i've moved your comment where you wanted it to be.
/jt
j. trant co-founder Museums and the Web | partner archives & museum informatics www.archimuse.com
sorry for doubleposting and not being able to find a delete button.