This seminar will be held on Thursday, 26th May 2016, Zagreb, Sheraton Zagreb Hotel, 16:30 – 17:30
The Cultural Heritage seminar looks at how heritage institutions are managing “to reconcile the twin objectives of maximising public access to their digital content while promoting their financial sustainability”, and how the decisions made by museums and other heritage institutions will impact on many members of CEPIC which represent these images. The seminar will bring together both the suppliers (heritage) and their distributors (agencies) to discuss the issues that are of concern to both.
In the UK, for instance, a discussion on this subject was held in January 2016 when several museums presented their diverse solutions. Although not a new topic, the approaches taken now by heritage institutions showed innovative thinking and greater understanding of how important digitisation is to their standing in the world. With increased pressure to give free access to their collections, and the emergence of ‘open content’ movements such as GLAMwiki and OpenGLAM, the heritage sector is pushed more and more in this direction.
This seminar aims at showing how the different needs and responses of cultural heritage institutions in the UK and other EU member states has lead to them taking different paths in the management of their organisations. Unlike the UK, most European countries charge a museum entry fee. As museum entrance is free, the UK generates its income from elsewhere; one revenue source being image licensing fees. Moreover, there is a growing trend amongst European museums to give free access for all uses, e.g. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
With the increasing likelihood of funding of the cultural heritage sector being reduced even further,
it is worth considering the options of using available assets as a source of revenue. Decisions made by the museums and other heritage institutions regarding their visual content will have an impact on many members of CEPIC which represent these images. These issues will be discussed between suppliers (heritage) and distributors (picture agencies) that represent this content in commercial markets.
The session will be moderated by Andrea Stern (The MOCA, Ministry of Copyright, Cultural and Creators’ Assets).
Speakers include Jeff Cowton (Museum Wordsworth Trust), Sandra Powlette (British Library), Thomas Pey (AKG Images) and David Price-Hughes (Bridgeman).
