Glamwiki – The Government Perspective
Well you can read Kate Lundy’s blog entry over here and it looks pretty much like the speech she gave at Glamwiki today where amongst other things, she argued the case for putting Australia’s cultural assets freely online. However her speech deserves a little analysis and context.
A key factor is the government’s current commitment to the National Broadband Network, which Kate and Green Senator Steve Ludlam both agree “changes everything” except the fact that Labor and the Greens still don’t control the Senate and both parties have a sniff of an election coming sooner rather than later. Senator Ludlam even quipped at one stage that all parties are “looking for creative ways to please the greatest number of people for the least cost” during the lively panel debate that followed Senator Lundy’s address.
Now some cynical folk will be tempted to see this exercise as more futuristic promises by the government and there are some grounds for thinking that in the current financial atmosphere the government is long on rhetoric but running a bit short on actual deliverables. The challenges in the digital age are immense and they are compounded by our rather quaint models of bureaucracy, some examples of which emerged today. Let’s assume 95% of Oz gets ADSL2+ speeds in the next five years after the NBN is rolled out (which is optimistic) then the cultural institutions represented at Glamwiki have a herculean job to get their stuff online and available. For example the National Archive has digitised approximately 2% of their assets, and they have teams working constantly on the process. Then there is the lack of uniform government strategy with regard to “online social policy” and copyright. Even the relatively simple and meritorious idea of converting Commonwealth copyright to something like Creative Commons seems like getting stuck in some lengthy interdepartmental argy bargy.
The government has announced taskforces to look at some of these issues which is commendable but as Kylie Johnson from Arts and Environment pointed out these are problems that require action sooner, not later. Ms Johnson concerns are highlighted by some global developments like the Smithsonian Institute’s recent Web and New Media Strategy which looks to be a fast track into the near future. Obviously strategies need to be co-ordinated but with so many different agencies pursuing their own agenda it seems obvious that the government desperately needs to get Gov 2.0 happening, preferably next week, before we all drown in the digital deluge.
The motivating factors for culture online are significant in the 21st century. Remote access, opportunities for education, and increased interest in preservation as well the open door to innovation all favour the push to put cultural assets online. Paul Reynolds who blogs here, stressed the importance of putting stuff where people need it or can find it. This approach acknowledges a key property of the web, it happens everywhere but it also happens contextually. To put this another way, making your digital assets hard to access or find means they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. Rather than “owning” online cultural assets collecting institutions probably need to reassess their capacity to act as authoratative sources with capabilities to track where their material gets used.
The Copyright Council weighed into the debate with doubts about the merits of giving stuff away. Ian MacDonald’s argument surprisingly enough seems to favour entrenched copyright interests but the link between copyright and the proper shepherding of resources seems tenuous at best. It also seems to assume that the public will be granted full access to preservation quality assets which is clearly absurd. However, one practical issue about copyright that did surface is familiar territory for the public broadcasters, that is, the mixture of rights that come with the assets in your collection. Even a blanket conversion of Commonwealth copyright to Creative Commons will still leave substantial assets out of the public domain.
Seb Chan from the Powerhouse Museum offered the example of the Australian Bureau of Statistics as “proof of concept” that free online assets do lead to innovation and better use by the public. There are also examples of online sources like Flickr driving the sales of high quality copies for various agencies. Given the physical scope of the challenges presented and the time frames involved, some of our naturally conservative institutions will have to undergo some serious risk assessment, the risk of doing nothing against the risk of doing something. Optimistically the web and innovations like Wikimedia will help put these collections into the public sphere but realistically, goodwill will have to break out all round for it to happen quickly.
Tags: Glam-wiki, Kate Lundy, Steve Ludlam, Wikimedia
