What Does Openness Mean To The Openness Museum Community

What Does Openness Mean To The Museum Community? Brian Kelly UKOLN University of Bath Bath, UK [email_address] UKOLN is supported by: Co-Author: Ross Gardler, JISC OSS Watch, University of Oxford http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/mw-2008/ This work is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial- ShareAlike 2.0 licence (but note caveat) Resources bookmarked using ‘ mw2008 ' tag Mike Ellis Eduserv Bath, UK [email_address]

About The Facilitators
Brian Kelly:
UK Web Focus – a national Web advisory post
Based at UKOLN, a national centre of expertise in digital information management, located at University of Bath, UK
Advisor to HE and cultural heritage sectors
Mike Ellis:
Head of Web for the National Museum of Science and Industry for 7 years
Now working at Eduserv, Bath
Interests include user generated content, Web 2.0, ubiquitous computing and innovation and how to exploit these to gain maximum benefit for cultural institutions
BK Introduction

About This Professional Forum
Openness:
A positive term
Covers open standards, open source, open content, open services and open culture
But:
What are the limitations of openness?
To what extent do we wish to embrace the concept of openness?
How do we respond if we feel that openness concepts may (a) be flawed (b) endanger our business models or (c) not be sustainable?
BK Introduction

About You
What responsibilities do you have?
Why have you chosen to attend this professional forum?
What do you hope to get out of the session?
BK Introduction

Benefits Of Open Standards
Open standards can:
Provide device- and application-independence
Avoid vendor lock-in
Provide an open marketplace for development
Maximise access to resources
Enhance interoperability
Provide architectural integrity
Provide long-term access to resources
Benefits are widely accepted by the development community:
Mandation of open standards in procurement
Lists of recommended open standards for digital library development programmes
Benefits Of Openness BK

Benefits Of Open Source
Open source software can:
Provide freedom to use, modify and redistribute software
Encourage competition which can increase the quality, satisfaction and flexibility of software
Help to ensure that software remains valuable to an organisation regardless of changing strategic objectives of any single software development organisation
Ensure there is no incentive to attempt to lock-in a customer by using proprietary extensions to file formats or data standards
Benefits Of Openness BK

Benefits Of Open APIs
Open APIs ...
..are systems which allow free sharing of data, programmatically
Typically have open standards at their core, or at least an open framework
Examples include RSS, REST, SOAP, OAI-PMH, for data sharing
Usually have XML or JSON as interchange format
Benefits Of Openness ME

Benefits Of Open APIs
Why is this good?
Fundamental to the web now is user-centricity . RSS etc. allow users to get what they want and how they want it
Shared data inspires creativity: “ we is better than me ” – see the Frankie & Seb show...
It frees us (and others) to use tools like the MIT timeline, Yahoo Maps, Google charts, etc – usually for no or low cost .
Additional benefits like mobile version are “easy”
The more data the better!
Also – if we don’t do it, services like Google images, Dapper etc will do it for us!

Benefits Of Open Content
Open Content:
Is content which can “got at” and shared
A hidden API or RSS feed isn’t “open”..
Word/PDF/Fax/email (etc.) isn’t “open”
Is often associated with CC licences
...which means it is usually free
As per Open APIs, if you provide access then you can see blossoming creativity
Throws up issues around income...

Benefits Of Open Content
Open Content:
...is reusable content.

Benefits Of An Open Culture
Openness is a core component of web 2.0
If we can’t use the web to connect with our users, then why use the web at all...?
Web 2.0 (actually, the web) is becoming more and more about people and relationships
A lot of what we’ve talked about this week is about or around Open Culture!
e.g. “Web 2.0: where do we go from here?”

Problems With Open Culture
Problems with user generated content:
Not all users are nice!
Users may prefer to listen to voice of authority
Automated spam is an increasing annoyance (email, blog comments, …)
Discussion often degenerates into flam wars
May be legal implications
It’s expensive to monitor
Open culture – great in theory; flawed in practice 
Limitations Of Openness BK

Problems With Open APIs
Problems with making use of 3 rd party APIs and services:
They don’t do this for our benefit, but to make money
The long-term business models are unproven
They can change their T&C at any time
They can withdraw services cf Amazon withdrawing their SOAP interface

Problems With Open Standards
Open standards:
Can be too complex
Can be difficult to implement
May fail to be accepted in the market place
Take long time to reach agreement
What is an open standard: PDF, RSS or MS Word?
We can seek to deploy too soon, before limitations, costs, etc. are understood (RDF?)

Problems With Open Source
Open source software:
Has been over-hyped
Didn’t bring long the demise of western capitalism!
May be issues related to:
documentation • support
SLA • sustainability
Source Forge as a dumping ground for failed Open Source projects
The discussion now is more about sustainability & fitness for purpose, whether OSS or proprietary

Contextual Approach
Contextual approach to open standards:
Developed to support JISC’s development programmes
Described at MW 2007
Based on annotated descriptions: ownership, purpose, maturity, risks, …
Decisions on policies and compliance delegated to appropriate level
Extended to include policies on open source software
Addressing The Limitations BK See “ Addressing The Limitations Of Open Standards ” and “ Openness in Higher Education: Open Source, Open Standards, Open Access ”

Problems With Open Content
Problems with allowing others to reuse content:
Undermines one’s business
Duplication of popular services but neglecting of minority interests
This isn’t liberal; it’s privatisation (similar to deregulation of public services)
The content owners are likely to be unhappy
Why should Facebook, MySpace, … make money from our content?
Open content – like socialism great in theory; doesn’t work in practice!

Open Content - Think About:
Scarcity vs Scale...which for us?
The Long Tail and the Niche
How do we address notions of intention ? Answer: we can’t!
Power of marketing vs power of commerce without marketing
Pirate Coelho. It worked for him!
Freemium, try before you buy?

Any Conclusions...?

What Does Openness Mean To The Openness Museum Community

by Brian Kelly on Apr 13, 2008

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What Does Openness Mean To The Openness Museum Community — Presentation Transcript

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