CC can help Australian galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) and other cultural heritage collections to compliment and enhance their collections. The CC-licences and CC0 can be used to share content created by a GLAM organisation, and to simplify user contributions. CC’s Public Domain Mark (PDM) can be used to identify material that is in the Public Domain and has not known copyright restrictions. No matter which tool is used, clearly identifying the uses a user can make of collections helps GLAM bodies fulfil their public interest mandates.
Potential benefits for Australian GLAM organisations using CC licences or CC’s Public Domain tools include:
- Discoverability of your collection: CC licences and Public Domain tools are widely recognised and respected, and marked material are discoverable by search engines and other online platforms. Because there is a machine-readable layer to CC-licences and Public Domain tools, your collections material is more likely to be found and shared when it is licensed under CC or marked with CC0 or the PDM.
- Sharing collections data: GLAM organisations create lots of content about their collections. This includes descriptions of collections items and other metadata, blog posts. The CC-licences and CC0 can be used to share content your staff create, promoting the sharing of information about cultural artifacts and historical documents.
- Simplfying user contributions: Copyright created as part of GLAM projects where the public contributes can become complicated. Encouraging or mandating contributions to user-generated content (UGC) projects and crowdsourcing effort such as text-correction be licensed under a CC licence or released under CC0 can simplify rights management for those contributions.
- Supporting Open Culture and “the commons”: By licensing your material under CC and marking Public Domain material with the PDM, GLAM organisations are contributing to the Open Culture movement. Licensing metadata helps to build “the commons” – a rich body of material freely available for legal sharing, reuse and remixing by anyone – in tandem with the Public Domain.
- Finding content your staff can reuse: There’s lots of visual art, photographs, music, sounds, films and other creative content your staff can use. CC helps them acquire, share, reuse and remix licensed content with confidence. Finding CC-licensed materials has helpful information on how to find licensed content.
If you are an Australian GLAM organisation interested in CC you can:
- Learn more about CC: We have information about finding and reusing CC materials, as well as information about the licences and deciding which is right for you.
- Licence your metadata: You can add a CC licence to your metadata such as item descriptions. If you aren’t sure which licence is right for you the interactive CC Chooser can help you decide. If you are new to licensing material using CC we recommend getting farmiliar with the considerations for licensors.
- Search for CC-licensed content: CC-licensed content you can share, reuse and remix can be found all over the internet. Finding CC-licensed materials has helpful information on how to find licensed content.
- Engage with communities of practice: Join the CC Open Culture Platform, part of the CC Global Network.
- Let us know about your collection: Share your CC experience on social media using the #CCinAU hashtag when you post on social media or by contacting us. We might even feature it!