Pioneering legal toolkit is helping cultural institutions around the world to share their collections online

A pioneering free toolkit is helping cultural institutions and organisations around the world to share their collections online.

Developed directly with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAMs), the new DIY Open GLAM Toolkit is available for cultural organisations of any size wanting to take the first steps towards open access.

Open access helps to make collections more visible and enables the sector to better serve residents, tourists, schools, historical societies, creators and businesses. It also enables cultural institutions to diversify income streams to support a more sustainable and resilient heritage sector. 

Staff at more than 24 institutions around the world have worked with the GLAM-E Lab to develop the Open GLAM Toolkit. Produced by legal experts from the University of Exeter and New York University’s Engelberg Centre on Innovation Law & Policy, the Toolkit helps cultural heritage organisations identify, prepare and publish their digital collections for public reuse. It guides cultural heritage organisations through the process of developing an open access strategy that costs as much, or as little, as they can afford.

The Open GLAM Toolkit resources support staff through the process of clearing copyright in the collections object, its digitization and its metadata with the goal of assigning a public domain dedication when it is lawful and appropriate to do so. The Toolkit also helps cultural organisations think about which images will be appropriate to publish in open access, and which may need to be set aside for further review.

Dr Andrea Wallace, from the University of Exeter, UK Director of GLAM-E Lab, said: “We have shown it doesn’t take radical reform or lots of money for organisations to make these changes. Adopting an open access approach can begin with small steps towards open, freeing up staff to focus on more mission-critical work, including the public programming that can open up new revenue streams for income generation.

“We are very proud of the pioneering institutions who have collaborated with us to develop the toolkit. It will save institutions time and money and reduce the barriers they often face related to needing legal support on open access.”

The first organisation to collaborate with the GLAM-E Lab was the Royal Albert Memorial Museum and Art Gallery in Exeter, which adopted an open access strategy for public domain artworks in 2023. In one year, RAMM’s 63 pilot images received over 6.16 million views online. The images appeared on history websites for children, study guides, other educational materials, in historical tours in Exeter and across websites for artists in the collection.

In adopting an open access approach at RAMM users can reuse digitised collections and contribute to the rich cultural heritage of Exeter, regardless of where they are. Since announcing their open access strategy, the RAMM has uploaded over 900 public domain images onto Wikimedia Commons relating to a number of themes, including International Women’s Day and Earth Day, and have been thrilled to see how people are using them.

An open access approach also supports organisations’ commitments to equity, diversity and inclusion. It removes the licensing fees charged to academics and researchers, who often pay to use images for their research and publications. It enables individuals and communities around the world to use images relevant to their own histories and heritage.

It can also reduce costs and the resources required to respond to image licensing requests and to update legacy data, collections and datasets.

The GLAM-E Lab is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Dr Wallace said: “Providing open access to heritage materials is one way that cultural institutions can fulfil their public and educational missions. Openly sharing their collections and metadata makes it easy for society to access, engage with, and learn from our shared cultural heritage.

“Open access can be approached on a collections-by-collections, or even object-by-object basis. The toolkit helps institutions solve problems and design safeguards to ensure that what they publish is sufficiently vetted and appropriate for public reuse. 

“It can reduce costs. Limiting access to digital collections is expensive. The digital infrastructure required to gate and toll access to digital collections can be much more expensive than making the same digital collections freely available online for self-service delivery. Open access does not prevent institutions from commercialising their collections.”

The launch of the Open GLAM Toolkit is also timely. Recent clarifications to UK copyright law confirm that no new rights arise in faithful photographic reproductions of public domain works. Collections are deemed to be in the “public domain” when copyright does not apply or has expired, making them available for free reuse by anyone for any purpose without permission. The Open GLAM Toolkit will support UK cultural organisations in updating their policies to align with legal and public expectations.

Around the world, more than 1,600 organisations participate in open GLAM, with 117 based in the UK alone.

Michael Weinberg, US Director of the GLAM-E Lab, said: “When cultural institutions share their collections, they make them available to visitors from around the world. The GLAM-E Lab’s international approach allows institutions of all sizes to confidently share their collections across legal jurisdictions and regimes.”

The launch of the Toolkit is accompanied a new Open GLAM Survey website which enables users to sort organisations by type, licenses or platforms used, opening up new potentials for reuse and research by a wide range of users.

Watch the Video Launch Announcement on YouTube.