How Open is Open Enough? Rationalizing Open Access at the Project Level

Cultural institutions are increasingly embracing open access (OA), making their collections and publications freely available online. But aside from a general belief that "open is good," institutions also need a coherent set of principles to inform their OA choices, as well as an appreciation of the difference between "gratis" OA (accessible free of charge) and "libre" OA (free from restrictions on re-use). There are significant challenges to "libre" OA in the art museum context, considering the number of stakeholders involved (e.g., artists, outside authors, lenders, and image sources). The effort involved in making such content "libre" (instead of merely "gratis") may not be worth the incremental added value, and can even undermine an institution's ability to appropriately resource projects where "libre" OA would be truly valuable. Similarly, institutions may not be prepared for the unintended consequences of "libre" OA. What should a museum do when its content - say a beloved collection masterpiece - is used in ways that the museum (or individual staff) finds objectionable on ideological or scholarly grounds? I'll discuss the difficulty of applying open licenses to content that itself includes licensed material, the tension between fair use and OA, and the need to embrace the good and the bad of unrestricted re-use. I will suggest questions to ask at the outset to determine whether a given project's outcome should be open, and if so what kind of OA is appropriate.