This document discusses the changing concept of museums over time from antiquity to the present. It focuses on how museums are grappling with opening up their digital collections in the modern era. Key points discussed include: - The role and audiences of museums have changed from antiquity to the present, shifting from research to prestige and national identity. - In the contemporary era, demands are changing with new consumption patterns and the internet, requiring museums to share content more openly online. - Major barriers to openness include fear of change, financial concerns, and legal issues around copyright and orphan works. - The document proposes thinking big but starting small by sharing content on platforms like Wikimedia to gain visibility, reuse

1. Public Domain Day
2018
Sam Donvil
sam@packed.be
@PACKEDvzw

2. • 2006 - 2010: Platform for Archiving and Conservation of Art on Electronic
and Digital Media
• 2011 - present: Centre of Expertise Digital Heritage
• Flemish, Belgian and European projects
• Support for ICT-processes at heritage and arts organisations (o.a.
creating, storage, cataloguing, online access, exchange and reuse) and
policy thereof
www.packed.be | www.projectcest.be | www.scart.be | www.projecttracks.be | www.scoremodel.org ...

4. The museum as a changing concept: antiquity >
museion
Role: scholarship
Audience: research
community

5. The museum as a changing concept:
renaissance > cabinet of curiosities
Role: prestige, display of ‘all’
objects
Audience: privileged visitors,
courtiers

6. The museum as a changing concept:
enlightenment and modern era > birth of the
modern museum
Role: scholarship & caretaking of objects, not
necessarily display
Audience: research community & privileged
visitors
Role: scholarship & caretaking of objects, national
prestige
Audience: research community, large middle class
audiences

7. The museum as a changing concept: contemporary era >
changing consumer demands

8. The museum as a changing concept: contemporary era >
changing consumption patterns
Serendipity
“The internet and the growth of digital libraries holds the promise of democratizing access not
just to knowledge, but to the opportunities to discover things you did NOT know you
wanted to discover.”
“We need serendipity now more than ever – and we need it for as many people as possible.
Because encountering new, unexpected ideas and information – being exposed to data,
arguments, concepts – through books, for example — that we didn’t know existed, just might
be the key to helping us all think in new ways, see the world through a different lens, and see
new ways to solve old and sticky problems.
Chris Bourg – Director of Libraries at MIT

9. The museum as a changing concept:
contemporary era > changing consumption
patterns

10. The museum as a changing concept: contemporary era >
memory institution as an online knowledge source
Future
interpretation:
-Share
-Contextualise
-Coordinate
-Facilitate
Conventional
interpretation:
-Control quality
-Control access
Current ICOM definition:
A museum is a non-profit, permanent
institution in the service of society and
its development, open to the public,
which acquires, conserves, researches,
communicates and exhibits the tangible
and intangible heritage of humanity and
its environment for the purposes of
education, study and enjoyment.

11. Why is open not the norm yet? > Fear of change
“To be a public museum your digital data should be free. And digital data is not a
threat to the real data, it’s just an advertisement that only increases the aura of
the original. People go to the Louvre because they’ve seen the Mona Lisa; the
reason people might not be going to an institution is because they don’t know
what’s in your institution. Digitization is a way to address that issue, in a way that
simply wasn’t possible before.”
William Noel, The Wide Open Future of the Art Museum, 2012

12. Why is open not the norm yet? >
Financial barriers
“Everyone (…) wants to recoup costs but almost none
claimed to actually achieve or expected to achieve this.
Even those services that claimed to recoup full costs
generally did not account fully for salary costs or
overhead expenses."
Reproduction charging models & rights policy for digital images in
American art museums, 2004
Simon Tanner,
King’s College London

13. Why is open not the norm yet? > Legal barriers
● Unreasonable expansion of
copyright
○ On original works
○ On their reproductions (highly
questionable though the still the
norm)
● Orphan works
picture by Opensourceway (CC BY-SA 2.0)

14. How can we change our business model to allow opening up
our digital collections now, in the absence of conclusive
evidenve about its long term impact on our institutions, if we
need to have that evidence to convince our colleagues and
management to start in the first place?

15. Solution: Think big, start small, move fast
● Overcoming the Catch-22 by doing as a matter of
principle within the possibilities and opportunities of
each institution
● Support network to exchange experiences, practices
and inspiration

16. Open Cultuur Data project

17. Open data on Wikimedia platforms
Why Wikimedia?
● visibility
● reuse
● engagement
● free + active community

18. Wikidata
○ Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp (7.798 artworks)
○ Museum of Fine Arts Ghent (6.973 artworks)
○ Groeningemuseum Brugge (2.858 artworks)
○ M - Museum Leuven (3.137 artworks)
○ Mu.ZEE (3.979 artworks)
○ S.M.A.K. (2.579 artworks)

19. Wikimedia Commons

20. Data enrichment and reuse

21. Data enrichment and reuse

22. Data enrichment and reuse

23. Data enrichment and reuse

24. Data enrichment and reuse

25. Data enrichment and reuse

27. Public Domain Day donations

28. Public Domain Day donations

29. Public Domain Day donations

30. Creative reuse

31. • Wikimedia projects:
• Public Domain Day
• Publishing images and more
structured data
• Reuse in Wikipedia-articles and
outside of the platform
• Wiki Loves Heritage
• Networked cultural data research
project:
• survey on the current demand
for cultural heritage data by
various sectors
• Stimulate (creative) reuse
PACKED vzw 2018 -...

32. Takeaway
“Our understanding of research,
education, artistic creativity, and the
progress of knowledge is built upon the
axiom that no idea stands alone, and that
all innovation is built on the ideas and
innovation of others.”
Smithsonian Web and New Media Strategy, Version
1.0, 2009

33. Thank you!
Questions? Feedback?
Sam Donvil
sam@packed.be
@PACKEDvzw