I can't agree more with Liam here.

I'm not an expert in museums, but I know libraries.

When I worked at the university of Bologna, I spoke with hundreds of researchers, Phd students, professors regarding Open Access.

As readers, they were completely in favour.

But they were always mumbling and thinking otherwise when they, as authors, were asked to provide their writings/articles in open access.

The good part of this story is: this is how closed access look like.

We should emphasize that.

Aubrey

On Mon, Mar 23, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt@gmail.com> wrote:

Of course I think that researchers should have free access to the collections as a core service of a public cultural collection. That's their raison d'etre. It should go without saying.

But I can't help also feeling that there is a two-class system in place, and all of a sudden these researchers have seen what it's like to be in the non-favoured-class...

In the wiki-verse, and indeed any online user of public cultural collections, we're very very used to being told that our access requests will incur a fee (e.g. to get access high-resolution copy of an already digitised public-domain image) - even when requests to access the same object in-person would be considered a free service. 

Obviously, operating a physical institution that accommodates access to the collection (e.g. a reading-room in a research-library with all the lights, heating, security, staffing...) is an expensive service to operate, but it is considered an important service to provide for free to the public. Yet, the much cheaper operating cost of providing a digital access service (an online database) is considered to be a different class of access-request. Online access-requests are frequently, not always, considered an opportunity for the institution to make money, whereas physical access requests are considered core-business. I think that this is underpinned by a culture that makes a value-judgement about what is the "right" kind of access. 

So now the UK Prehistoric Society would like the digital open-access community to stand with them to fight for the right to have free access to research collections - and I agree. But, would the UK Prehistoric Society stand with the digital open-access community in our fight to have digital usage considered no longer be considered a "second-class citizen"?

I think there is an interesting parallel with 1968 Ford motor company strikes in the UK https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968 (see also the 2010 film "made in Dagenham").

At the time, the women working for Ford were paid less for an equivalent level of skilled work. The women had supported the men's previous unionised-action for better work-conditions, but when they asked for the Union's support in their equal-pay fight, the Union wasn't interested. The (male) union-leaders like having the female employees support for their own claims but didn't consider the women's claims to be serious/important - and feared that if the women were paid the same amount as the men, then the company would fire some of the men to keep costs down. A two-class system... 

Eventually the right to equal-pay-for-equal-work became the law and the world didn't end...

So, I would like the UK Prehistoric Society researchers to know I support their right to free-access to undertake their research in the public collections of the UK. But, would they support us in return?

-Liam

wittylama.com
Peace, love & metadata

On 20 March 2015 at 21:38, Pat Hadley <pat@pathadley.net> wrote:

Hi all,

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

--

Pat Hadley

Yorkshire's open culture brain-for-hire

pathadley.net

@pathadley

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