The Eduserv foundation has funded a study, led by Jordan Hatcher, into the “current usage of Creative Commons (and other open content) licences by cultural heritage organisations in the UK”. The aim of the study is to try to build a snapshot of usage and plans for usage of open licenses for as broad a cross-section of cultural heritage organisations as possible. It will also strive to ascertain respondents’ knowledge of and attitudes towards open licensing. While the survey will initially examine a broad range of alternative licensing options, Jordan has indicated that the write-up will draw a distinction between those that are open and those that are not along similar lines to the Open Knowledge Definition.
The full proposal says:
If this work shows that there is a significant interest in and use of open content licences
then we intend to carry out more detailed case studies with the view to producing advice
for organisations considering publishing under these kinds of licences.
If you know anyone working in a cultural heritage organisation, it would be great if you could let them know about the survey! We look forward to seeing the finished report.
Dr. Jonathan Gray is Lecturer in Critical Infrastructure Studies at the Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London, where he is currently writing a book on data worlds. He is also Cofounder of the Public Data Lab; and Research Associate at the Digital Methods Initiative (University of Amsterdam) and the médialab (Sciences Po, Paris). More about his work can be found at jonathangray.org and he tweets at @jwyg.
Thanks for the post!