Making the Business Case for Open Access

At the start of 2024, the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery (RAMM) announced a new Open Access Strategy: for the first time, RAMM released digital surrogates of public domain works using the Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication. Like any major strategic change, RAMM’s move to open access required time, careful planning, and collective effort to see it through. It was also supported by the GLAM-E Lab, an AHRC funded project which works with smaller and less well-resourced UK and US cultural institutions and community organizations to build open access capacity and expertise. This talk reflects on the process while sharing the lessons learned from RAMM’s journey. It sets out the research-led approach taken by RAMM and GLAM-E Lab to make the business case for open access, starting with a small set of 63 CC0 images published to Wikimedia Commons. It demonstrates how a simple decision to start small and pilot the work can bring transformative results for an organisation and its ability to design a scalable and more sustainable open access strategy in the long term. Please join the team from the GLAM-E Lab project for this very informative talk, with a Q&A to follow:

Andrea Wallace, Associate Professor of Law & Technology & Director of the GLAM-E Lab, University of Exeter, Francesca Farmer, Research Fellow, GLAM-E Lab & Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Michael Weinberg, Executive Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law. Andrea, Francesca and Michael lead the GLAM-E Lab project, a partnership between the University of Exeter Law School and Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at NYU Law School, in collaboration with the Digital Humanities Lab and Royal Albert Memorial Museum.

• Andrea’s research focuses on intersections of art and cultural heritage with the digital realm and digital heritage management. Her research considers the impact of digital technologies on the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of cultural heritage. She frequently writes and presents on open culture and the impact that a claim to copyright in reproductions has on meaningful access to and reuse of cultural heritage in the public domain.
• Francesca’s research focuses on the intersection between technology, law and public policy. Her research considers the impact of technology on privacy, data protection and copyright. She is currently a Research Fellow at the GLAM-E Lab, an interdisciplinary digitisation clinic for smaller and less well-resourced cultural institutions and community organizations.
• Michael's research focuses on expanding incentives for open access, and for the impact that open access can have on wider culture.