Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage

This practical and explanatory guide for library and cultural heritage professionals introduces and explains the use of open licences for content, data and metadata in libraries and other cultural heritage organisations. Using rich background information, international case studies and examples of best practice, this book outlines how and why open licences should and can be used with the sector's content, data and metadata. Open Licensing for Cultural Heritage digs into the concept of 'open' in relation to intellectual property, providing context through the development of different fields, including open education, open source, open data, and open government. It explores the organisational benefits of open licensing and the open movement, including the importance of content discoverability, arguments for wider collections impact and access, the practical benefits of simplicity and scalability, and more ethical and principled arguments related to protection of public content and the public domain. Content covered includes:

1. Introduction 2. The Open Movement: its history and development 3. Copyright and licensing: a background 4. Open licensing: the logical option for cultural heritage 5. Small steps, big impact: how SMK became SMK Open 6. Open metadata licensing: the British Library experience 7. Open policy and collaboration with Wikimedia at the National Library of Wales 8. Newcastle Libraries 9. Drivers for open: the development of open licensing at the National Library of Scotland 10. Wellcome Library 11. Development of an OER policy and open approaches to mitigate risk at University of Edinburgh 12. How to implement open licensing at your organisation 13. Using and re-use openly licensed resources 14. Conclusion