The Importance of the Public Domain for Cultural Collections and Metadata

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay (1)

1 CIS - Centre Internet et Société

This article is addressed to cultural, educational, research and memory institutions which constitute, manage, and distribute heritage collections of works and data. It advocates that they should be as freely available and reusable as possible, close to the public domain. The public domain, in the strict copyright definition, is the state of cultural, scientific and literary works and data when they can be freely accessed and reused without asking for permission, or paying any remuneration. The article provides practical guidelines to support the successive copyright-related tasks leading to the creation of an online archive without unnecessary copyright limitations for access and reuse.

Mots clés: public domain; digital archives; Creative Commons; licensing; copyright

Domaines: Sciences de l'information et de la communication; Droit; Héritage culturel et muséologie

Melanie Dulong de Rosnay. The Importance of the Public Domain for Cultural Collections and Metadata. Archivio di Etnografia, 2020, 1-2. ⟨hal-02870455⟩