Cultural Heritage: The Finnish National Gallery Opens Up Its Collections

From an Interview with Europeana (via Medium):

The Finnish National Gallery recently applied an open licence (CC0) to its digital reproductions of out-of-copyright works, joining leading institutions in the OpenGLAM movement to promote free and open access to digital cultural heritage. Riitta Ojanperä, PhD, Director of Collections Management, tells us all about the Gallery’s new policy.

What led to the policy change and who was involved?

The initial drive came from some Finnish OpenGLAM activists around 2012 and our first actual operations came quickly afterwards, focussing on images from our archival collections.

Riitta, why has the Gallery adopted an open licence for its out-of-copyright works?

The FNG aspires to be among the very best museums in northern Europe, taking into consideration our audience needs and expectations. Opening up our collections data is one way of leading our customers towards even richer museum experiences, and of course the requirements of national and EU cultural policies very strongly pointed the way to a tenacious open-data policy.

Learn More, Read the Complete Interview
Resources
Direct to Treasures from the Finnish National Gallery (via Europeana)
Direct to Complete Finnish National Gallery Collection (via Europeana)
Direct to Finnish National Digital Collections (via Finnish National Gallery)
Direct to Finnish National Gallery Open Data Info

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