Open by default, closed by exception
Auckland Museum’s five-year journey to open its collections online
In the first of a two-part series, Victoria Passau (Collection Manager, Online Cenotaph) and Zoë Richardson (Image Orders and Permissions Manager) describe Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum’s journey towards open access, and where it’s headed next.
Kō Pukekawa te maunga; kō Waitematā te moana; kō Tāmaki Paenga Hira te whare taonga.
New Zealand’s oldest research and collecting institution, Auckland War Memorial Museum Tāmaki Paenga Hira is built on a 168-year legacy of scholarship and innovation that has contributed to a deep understanding of the world around us. We are Aotearoa’s largest regional museum, in a city of 1.6 million people. The Museum holds 4.5 million items across four main collecting areas: Natural Sciences, Documentary Heritage, Human History, and Online Cenotaph.
The museum’s Collection Information and Access team facilitates research and enquiry and provides access to data and images. In this way, we act as a catalyst for new knowledge. Our team includes photographers, librarians, collection technicians, and technical specialists. We work on image orders, copyright and cultural permissions, our Online Cenotaph and Collections Online databases, research, Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge), data, and our website.
Our Journey to Open
Auckland Museum’s journey to “Open” started in 2012 with the implementation of our Future Museum strategy that was followed by a release of more than a million collection records through an updated Collections Online database in 2015. Since then we’ve operated on the concept of being “Open by default, closed by exception”. This applies to both physical or digital access, through image orders, data licensing, and research.
In the last year, Collections Online and Online Cenotaph have been accessed by nearly 500,000 users, for a total of 2 million page views. Our API can be used to access collection metadata, serviceperson information, and multimedia resources. We’re committed to amplifying the reach of our digital collections and have established more than 20 partnerships with online platforms, partner organisations, and aggregators to share our collections with the world.
Collaborative partnerships with like-minded organisations allow us to share our passion for open access wherever potential users are, rather than expecting them to come to us. For example, we have more than 125,000 openly licensed images in Wikimedia Commons. This content has been embedded in 700 Wikipedia pages in 97 languages. Partnerships have helped us to massively extend our audience.
This financial year (2019/20) we’ve already experienced 13 million views and interactions with records, images and data on external platforms, across a variety of disciplines and collecting areas. We would never get this scale of interaction from people accessing our own site.
We’ve also uploaded to Flickr more than 2,300 photos of collection images taken by our ace team of photographers. This is one of the ‘artier’ angles …..
Alongside these mass uploads of data and images, we work with platforms with curated content such as Google Arts & Culture, making exhibitions and collections available to anyone with an Internet connection.
Online Cenotaph is our database of military personnel who have served on active duty in the New Zealand Defence Force, or New Zealanders who have served elsewhere in times of conflict. It includes more than 235,000 records and enables the public to add information directly into each individual record. We have received more than 100,000 pieces of data, images, documents and personal messages since it re-launched in 2015. This data is shared under CC- BY 4.0. Read the Online Cenotaph Collection Policy for more information.
Advocating for Copyright reform
We believe copyright legislation should balance the rights of creators and users with the dissemination of and access to knowledge and new creative works.
Like many institutions of our size, we have a Copyright Framework. This is one place where the kaupapa (topic) of “Open by default, closed by exception” is central. Where Auckland Museum holds the copyright in a given item, we try to release our images of it under a CC-BY 4.0 license. We use the statement “No known copyright restrictions” when releasing digital images of two-dimensional public-domain works. When releasing images of objects for which we do not hold the copyright, we offer Creative Commons licensing options to external rights holders, further advocating for an open approach to content.
New Zealand’s Ministry for Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) is presently undertaking a review of the Copyright Act 1994. The initial issues paper MBIE released received significant feedback and submissions from the GLAM sector highlighting challenges in the current legislation and the ongoing impact on the wider cultural sector. Our submission can be read online (PDF, 214KB).
One of our big issues is the exclusion of Museums and Galleries from Library and Archives exceptions. We have a prescribed library within the Museum but the exceptions afforded to our librarians aren’t afforded to our other colleagues. For example, it can be a matter of historical accident or deliberate management decision to include a photograph or document in the museum’s history collection or its library, which can lead to different legal treatment under the current Act. Museums and Galleries should be included in existing Libraries and Archives exceptions, as this would provide some consistency across the sector and within institutions.
Orphaned works present a considerable issue and cost for us as a museum. Digitisation projects involve constant risk assessment. Collections with complex copyright are often shelved in favour of 19th-century collections, which are often seen as comparatively “easy” to process and maintain. This is concerning as it skews the public’s perception of what we hold and value. Essentially, 20th-century collections remain largely invisible. We do undertake due-diligence searches and risk assessments for our numerous orphaned works.
New Zealand is blessed with the NZGOAL (New Zealand Government Open Access and Licensing) framework, an all-of-government set of guidelines for agencies to follow when releasing for reuse copyrighted works and non-copyright/public-domain material. While we are exempt from NZGOAL because we are not a government- or council-controlled organisation, we embrace the values of this kaupapa.
AMNZ100288, CC BY 4.0
Conclusions
The journey we have been on to open our collections has been full of courage and recalibration. We are pleased to now see the fruits of our labour. The mantra of “Open by default, closed by exception” is central to the work of the CIA team. However, Aotearoa is a colonial society and museums like ours must remain cognisant of our role in shifting the dialogue.
While we aim for openness, we are conscious that Auckland Museum operates in a triangular space between the philosophical desire for openness, the constraints of an imperfect copyright regime, and concerns around community guardianship, indigenous intellectual property, and data sovereignty.
We fundamentally believe ‘open’ as a concept, but there is always a grey area and we think it’s time to get adjacent — #OpenAdjacent. In the second instalment of this series, we will discuss the cultural context of our open-access approach and how we consider Māori and Pacific taonga (treasures) in our care.
Authors: Victoria Passau, Collection Manager, Online Cenotaph; Zoë Richardson, Image Orders and Permissions Manager, Tāmaki Paenga Hira Auckland War Memorial Museum
