GLAM/Newsletter/March 2017/Contents/Germany report

This Month in GLAM – Volume VII, Issue III, March 2017

Germany report

Change Your mind

Making licensing easier for GLAM staff

Our goal: Working in the GLAM field we like to obtain as much content under free license as possible from the GLAM institutions. Yet talking to staff in GLAM institutions we very often we met the statement: "We would like to share our content under free license, but we do not know how to do it. It seems so complicated. We would like to have one license that fits all. As it doesn't work, we'd rather leave it for an other day." I am sure you often heard the same. The problem is obvious: GLAM staff needs to be enabled to deal the 'license thing'. Together with GLAM people and the German Digital Library we have developed a workshop on free license. We call it "©© Change your mind". Because we want the attendees to change their mind to how easy it is to apply free license from case to case. Albeit you have to bear in mind some advices and this is the witty point, yes there are media files or other content that you will not release for reuse. We explain to them three options 1) public domain,2) CC BY and 3) "not fit for reuse". That is the theory. Then comes the fun part. They get examples they have to label themselves and we assign each one of them through a lottery either as promoter for free license, as opponent or as moderator. This gets the debate vivid and will make people really change their minds. Because we know, often it needs an open mind to create open data. In March we ran the workshop "©© Change your mind" the 5th time. In Bonn 24 persons from from 15 GLAM institutions attended the workshop. And more workshops will come. We'd like you to copy the idea. Please start from the learning learning pattern, do come with comments or questions and let us know how you make GLAM people changing their minds on free license.