There's been a recent bit of coverage in the UK over the issue of museums charging researchers for collection access.

The strongest arguments for free and open access have come from the Prehistoric Society and can be seen on the Museum's Association Website.

At York Museums Trust (hosts of my project) they do not charge researchers and have recently begun insisting that visiting researchers openly licence any photographs they take of collections items and encouraging them to pursue open access publishing of the research output (not always possible).

I was wondering whether the GLAMwiki movement might like to speak on the issue and encourage GLAMs with which we are working to consider this part of their openness strategy.

Research is one of the key ways in which collections are enriched. I for one am fed up with finding obscure notes on collection databases implying the existence of research done in the last decade which is now invisible online and/or has no paper-trail at the museum.

What do people think?

Cheers,

Pat

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