Time: November 11, 2011
Place: DR-byen, Studio 4
Organizers: The Association of Danish Museums, The Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and The National Gallery of Denmark
How do we create value through the digitized cultural heritage? By sharing it and making it accessible.
The purpose of the seminar is to bring together library, archive and museum professionals to discuss the preconditions for establishing a free and common access to digitized cultural heritage. The speakers will share their insights into the technical requirements and provide inspiring examples of how together we can create synergies between digitized cultural heritage collections.
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Welcome speech by Merete Sanderhoff, The National Gallery of Denmark
In May 2011, Yale University decided to provide free and open access to their digitized artworks in the public domain. The memo contained the following statement:
“The preservation, transmission, and advancement of knowledge in the digital age are promoted by the unencumbered use and reuse of digitized content for research, teaching, learning, and creative activities.”
This could easily stand as the motto for this seminar:
Sharing is caring – when cultural heritage is openly and freely accessible, everyone has a chance to use it, engage with it. It becomes relevant, a part of people’s lives. It creates a sense of shared ownership that makes us care. If it is locked away and hard to get to, why should we care? If it is a tool and an experience in daily life, it becomes a living part of us.
Yale is just one out of a host of large cultural heritage institutions that have taken this stand. Libraries, archives, and museums around the globe are opening up and asking the public to please go ahead and use our common treasures.
This is changing cultural heritage institutions from within. We are leaving the role of authority/expert to partner/facilitator. Or why not a friend that you trust – to talk to, to discuss with, who will share her stuff and thoughts and ideas with you, and you want to do the same.
In order to be relevant to the users of today and tomorrow, we need to share. Sharing demands networked efforts and common standards. How do we establish the preconditions for sharing – and caring for – our common cultural heritage?
Because we share the same challenges, it seems smarter – and more fun J – to try and figure this out together than on our own. That is why we are meeting today.
A range of great speakers are ready to share ideas and insights on:
- What we can gain from collaborating cross institutions
- how we can build sustainable technical solutions, that enables different institutions to share and combine their data and content
- how we can tackle intellectual property issues in the current media reality
- and much more
These are grand challenges. But Michael Edson – who keynotes the seminar – has the following piece of advice: A year from now, how should our organisations have moved and changed? How will we feel if nothing has happened? Start working for it today!