Open Access Collections Article
June 3 2020
Picture: Apollo Magazine
Posted by Adam Busiakiewicz:
Apollo have published an article by Douglas McCarthy and Andrea Wallace on the case for open access collections. It contains a good summary of the current state of the debate which this blog has been a passionate supporter of over the years.
This description of the benefits that Cleveland Museum of Art have seen from their open access policy is encouraging:
Open access can also be transformative inside heritage institutions. One year after the Cleveland Museum of Art’s open access launch, its chief digital information officer, Jane Alexander, noted the following impacts: increased updating of attribution, provenance and collections information; curators forging new connections with scholars; and resources being reallocated from responding to image requests to supporting digitisation. The vast majority of the museum’s online users who are looking for images now self-serve from its online collections, freeing up valuable staff time.
It is also a good time to draw attention to this recently established campaign group Art for All, which is dedicated to fighting the cause here in the UK. I'm sure Bendor might have more to say about this project in due course.
