In March we hosted the second Institute for Open Leadership, and in oursummary of the eventwe mentioned that the Institute fellows would be taking turns to write about their open policy projects.
I had the privilege of participating in the secondInstitute for Open Leadership(IOL), held in Cape Town and hosted by Creative Commons and the Open Policy Network. The institute was attended by people from various places around the world, all with incredible projects.For the last nine years I’ve been active in the area of documentation and museum collections management. I have a Bachelor’s degree in Museology and a Master’s in Information Science. Currently I work as collection manager ofMuseu da Imigração de São Paulo(Immigration Museum of São Paulo). I also teach Museology at theETEC Parque da Juventude, where I instruct classes on museums and databases.
在开放领导学院，我接触到了一个我不太了解的世界:支持开放知识、开放科学、开放教育的倡议世界，以及更多。此外，作为一名GLAM专业人士(“GLAM”是“画廊、图书馆、档案馆和博物馆”的缩写)，我有机会就我为研究所准备的开放政策提案获得各种各样的反馈。IOL会议对我来说非常重要，从某种意义上说，这是我在移民博物馆领导的项目的一个分水岭。
Lithuanian necklace selected to be part of the exhibition, by Conrado Secassi.CC BY-SA 4.0. Source:Wikimedia Commons.
最初，我的项目关注的是这样一个问题:如果我们没有太多关于作者权利、肖像权、人格权的信息，那么通过分享一个庞大而丰富的文化遗产收藏的内容，我们能探索什么?我们如何开始将Imigração博物馆转变为一个有兴趣开放其藏品的机构，尽管有这些限制?
Many professionals working in GLAM institutions constantly face problems related to intellectual property and authors’ rights in the content of their collections. We are thus led to focus on restriction rather than sharing, which deserves attention, but for which there is no simple, prompt solution. By directly addressing these questions within the scope of my project, I hoped to find advice and best practices from other related GLAM professionals. I needed to get a better answer for how to share other than “it cannot be done.”
As I met IOL participants and learned about their projects, I heard many interesting stories about how universities and other research institutions were able to establish open policies through short, medium, and long-term initiatives. I also learned that the design and implementation of successful open licensing policies will (and should) work through different stages and levels. Finally, I learned it’s crucial to start small with my project, and to work with materials that will bring benefits for the people directly involved. And this, I can now say, was the real turning point for the Museu da Imigração’s project.
Ryukyu hat selected to be part of the exhibition, by Letícia Sá.CC BY-SA 4.0. Source:Wikimedia Commons.
我修改了我的项目，以探索那些可以以更开放的方式使用和共享的材料，而不是专注于我们收藏的部分知识产权问题。换句话说，这个项目被重新设计，从已经不受任何作者权利限制的收藏品开始，这些收藏品可以，例如，由Imigração博物馆的现有团队拍摄。The museum could— as the author of photos, texts, images, and audiovisual materialsaboutthe collection—make those objects available on the web through blogs, social media, and other platforms. At the same time, the museum could establishhowthis content could be re-used by anybody through the adoption of Creative Commons licenses.
回到巴西后，我的第一项主要任务是教育Imigração博物馆的技术团队使用知识共享，并与他们共同探讨如何在我们的博物馆采取开放政策。卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析My colleagues immediately agreed that we should pursue the project, and we decided that our pilot initiative would start with all of the content produced for a temporary exhibit calledO Caminho das Coisas(The Way of Things).
The main reason for choosing this particular exhibition as our pilot project was the possibility of involving several professionals in the development of content and materials to be made available online under open licenses. Everybody could see—in a relatively short period of time—the impact of their work to increase the visibility of the collections and of materials produced by the teams. Another important motivation was the fact that this exhibit was the result of a joint research effort between the Museu da Imigração, migrant communities and their descendants, partner institutions, and former donors in order to obtain additional historical information about the institution’s collections.
我们同意使用知识共享许可，因为该许卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析可是一种明确、客观的方式，告诉公众可以对我们在网上提供的博物馆内容做些什么。此外，通过使用知识共享许可，博物馆加入卡塔尔vs葡萄牙分析了CC推动的在全球范围内共享、混音和重用知识的伟大运动。
基于这一决定，团队制作了展览中选择的物体图像，以及展览附带的教育材料。We also decided that the museum’s blog and its profile onMediumshould be licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 from that moment on.
The platforms used for publicizing the images wereFlickr(which is heavily used in Brazil by both professional and amateur photographers and institutions),Pinterest(not very popular in Brazil, although it has faithful followers), andWikimedia Commons. As to the latter, we were happy for the valuable assistance from Rodrigo Padula, coordinator of the Brazilian Wikipedia Group on Education and Research, who helped us in loading the images and educational materials into Wikimedia Commons.
General overview of the exhibition, by Juliana Monteiro.CC BY-SA 4.0. Source:Wikimedia Commons.
O Caminho das Coisas该博物馆于5月21日正式对外开放，其精美的设计旨在唤起人们对这些文物通过其主人的一生所走过的历史道路的思考，直到它们抵达博物馆。此外，人们还在不同的地方张贴二维码，邀请公众在我上面提到的平台上查看图片。我们也希望观众能在社交媒体上分享这些图片，给博物馆贴上标签。
Our pilot project was launched nearly two months ago, and we have already gained some interesting insights. The first is that the experience has been indeed very exciting and successful. In our team’s view, the 40+ images of key items in our collection that we posted to Flickr, Pinterest, and Wikimedia Commons have opened numerous possibilities for the material’s reuse. In addition, it represents a positive step forward in making the museum’s collections more widely available to different audiences. We are also planning new initiatives by reviewing and analyzing the data and research we’ve gleaned from this pilot.
Other aspects of the exhibition have shown our team that we still have a long, productive way ahead. We identified a major challenge for GLAM institutions in Brazil is to have the capacity and knowledge to be able to consider the “openness” of all collections as a normal, everyday activity. Right now only a few of our institutions are promoting open initiatives, and the public does not always understand what can be created with these type of materials. Also, the lack of tools to encourage people to do this may be a contributing factor to this scenario. Sure, we manage to securelikeson Facebook and shares on social media, but we still don’t know if or how the images are being reused in other contexts. Finally, there is a lack of knowledge about Creative Commons licenses—both on the part of the public and by institutions as well.
With this in mind, we know it is not enough simply to upload images onto the web – we need to tell people about them, contextualize them, and get feedback and cooperation from various audiences. Our use of social media in this experience showed us that we must adapt our way of communicating about open content in order to reach new and diverse groups of people. We have already learned, for instance, that it is not worth showing photos of details of objects on Wikimedia Commons, as these types of images are not useful for illustrating Wikipedia articles. However, they can be explored on Pinterest, where the public is more accustomed to searching for these kinds of specific detailed images.
We know that Flickr is a useful tool for photographers—even those interested in licensing photos for commercial use. At the same time, we might focus on using alternative popular platforms to talk about the project and invite the public to view, enjoy, and comment on our images. Of course, apps and sites such as Instagram and Facebook are quite popular in Brazil.
We are learning by trial and error. We want to test our ideas and see which ones will mature. My IoL grant made it possible for us to include the proposal of opening our collections as something the museum should address more systematically in our internal policies and public mission. We believe that through these steps we will be positively promoting a more open cultural heritage that is increasingly accessible to all.
