Reconciling Scholarship with Stewardship

On January 5, 2009 the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science published a document titled Best Practices for Access to Images: Recommendations for Scholarly Use and Publishing. To my ears it reads far more like a thoughtful manifesto than a statement of best practices.   But perhaps these two things are just a matter of degree.

This short document was the end product of a year long process initiated by the Institute, which “brought together a small group of scholars, curators, publishers, and other stakeholders” to reflect on the difficulties faced by scholars  in obtaining access to the visual materials which are increasing essential to their work and yet soaring in price, due to a variety of factors including the “for-profit approach to digital cultural heritage,” the “fear of abuse and theft” of these works by curators, and  by often improper reliance on claims of copyright by institutional owners of unique works.

As summarized by Christine von Oertzen  in her article New Ways of Using Digital Images  Recommendations Concerning the Free Use of Visual Media for Scholarly Purposes:

The document calls upon curators and scholars to enter into a new relationship to promote mutual trust and common interests. The aim of our compact is to address the pressing challenges raised by our digital present and future. We request that curators refrain from arbitrarily restricting the public domain. We further ask our colleagues in libraries, museums, and other repositories to accommodate the needs of scholars for freely accessible, high-resolution digital images. This request concerns not only print publications, but also new forms of electronic publishing. We exhort scholars in the humanities to respect the special custodial responsibility of museums, libraries, and other image repositories. In particular, we insist that careful attention to attribution must become part of each scholar’s contribution to a relationship based on trust and mutual benefit.

She makes the key point succinctly:

Access to unique historic objects, images, or texts – cultural heritage – is only rarely a copyright issue.  Access to cultural heritage is first and foremost a contractual matter.  As such, access to cultural heritage is inherently negotiable.  When repositories impose excessive fees on scholars, with reference to copyright they may not be operating within the boundaries of the law. (my emphasis)

As should be clear to anyone who has read my ideal for image access, I would go a step further and argue that access to cultural heritage should be available to all of society and that in the case of public institutions who hold these objects in trust for the public, there is a fiduciary duty to provide that access in the most democratic way possible.   More on the practical considerations as to how that might work another time.

While my primary focus in Ofness is the access to such images by subject matter, it is important to regularly shift focus back to the threshold issue of simple access.  The Max Plank Institute is, gratefully, at the forefront of the organizations worldwide which are playing an important role in securing open access to digital images.   It should be noted that the Institute cites several other important players in this movement, including European Cultural Heritage Online (ECHO), which was launched by the Institute and is supported by the European Commission.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York are noted for their efforts to cooperate with scholars, the latter through its collaboration with ARTstor, a non-commercial digital library.    While the latter makes high resolution images available through ARTstor, those images are available only available  to those affiliated with subscribing institutions and their members.   The public has no access to them, and as I noted in the article The Metropolitan Flunks Subject Search, the Met’s own site falls far short of my ideal access to images.   The V&A, on the other hand, has a far more liberal approach, which will be described more fully in another post.

The Institute’s site also provides links to  several other fascinating digital collections relating to the specific focus of the Institute,  “to understand scientific thinking and practice as historical phenomena.”  These include Archimedes – CDLI – Development of Mechanical Knowledge in China -  Drawing with Optical Instruments – ECHO-  Einstein in Annalen der Physik -  Galileo Galilei´s Notes on Motion -  History of Quantum Physics-  Humboldt Project -  Jordanus -  KNB -  Machine Drawings -  Mesopotamian Year Names -  Microscopic Slides -  Perseus -  Pratolino -  The Years of the Cupola -  VLP.    The site provides only short descriptions of these collections, a picture and a link,  which is not really adequate.   I’d refer the Institute to the more detailed approach described in my post  TASI – A Great Portal to Image Collections.   I barely scratched the surface of one of these digital collections, the Archimedes Project.  It is just wonderful and must be the subject of another post by virtue of the example it provides to the subject matter of Ofness and some functionality I have never seen before.  Stay tuned.

Of all the places the Institute directed me to in an afternoon of delightful image searching the most interesting from my perspective was Prometheus.   There is too much to say about it here.  Check it out yourself or come back for a visit in the near future.  I’ll get to it asap.  Since the Max Plank Institute has sent me off in at least four different fruitful directions I can’t promise when that will be.

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Tagged as: Aristotle Project, ARTstor, Copyright, cultrual heritage, Cultural heritage, Digital library, ECHO, Max Plank Institute for the History of Science, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access, Public domain, scholarly publication, Victoria and Albert Museum