Legal and practical challenges of digitization (focus on Galleries and Museums)
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GLAMs rarely receive dedicated legal training on issues related to digitization, which could indeed help them to better navigate the articulated regulatory framework behind their everyday digital activities.
On the occasion of the project’s workshops dedicated to explore key issues emerging from the research findings, we are therefore offering dedicated training sessions to GLAM stakeholders.
These sessions are aimed at providing participants with practical information that can be useful to their activities and digital mission. They also offer us the chance to test the findings as well as the specific outputs of our research.
To these aims, project’s trainers will present one or more case scenarios that participants will read, analyze and discuss in small groups. The discussion recreates a typical controversial situation experienced by GLAMs professionals and it will be facilitated by trainers.
Those taking part in the workshops and users of the platforms are later encouraged to engage, share their experience and follow up.Case scenario 1
To be used during the training session of the workshop “Open Up Museums. Prospects and Challenges of Accessibility, Diversity and Inclusion”, especially dedicated to Galleries and Museums, held in Trento and Rovereto (Italy) on May 26 and 27, 2022:The curators of a well-known public museum, in the context of an ambitious art project involving a selected group of visitors, use the images of three famous paintings in the public domain (Degas' Ballerinas, Magritte's Lovers, Van Eyck's Mr and Mrs Arnolfini) to create digital works that incorporate and transform the paintings they are inspired by. The visitors involved participate in the creation of the works by providing images taken of the works during their visits, which the curators assemble and recompose. In addition to exhibiting the printed version of these works on canvas, the museum publishes them digitally on its website, decisively restricting access (only on request and with specific credentials) and enjoyment (by applying a proprietary licence under which it reserves all rights to the works). The museum also publishes digital reproductions of the original works on the site, similarly limiting public access and use. Instead, it allows unlimited purchase of related merchandising.
What do you think about the overall structure of the training session? Have you ever encountered any of the issues prompted by the exemplary case scenario? Do you believe that you would need specific legal training to understand and solve such issues? Is there a different case scenario you usually experience?
Keywords: digitization - cultural heritage - copyright - legal training