GLAM/Case studies/Copyright workshop for GLAMs

Context/background

This workshop is part of a series of six workshops on Wikimedia topics for the participants of a project focused on sharing regional heritage from small cultural institutions in the province of Gelderland, the Netherlands. By organising joined workshops on overarching topics like copyright, upload tools and impact measurement, we hope to be time efficient and also to create a platform for the participants to share their experiences on collaborating on Wikimedia projects. In 2017, seven similar workshops were organised. Each workshop consists of a lecture part with information and of a hands on part where the participants get to go to work on the topic.

The workshops are part of a larger project that focuses on enabling regional institutions to share their collections and knowledge on Wikimedia. This pilot project was started in 2017 and continued in 2018. a total of 15 institutions are participating . It is a collaboration between Wikimedia Nederland and Erfgoed Gelderland. Erfgoed Gelderland is an umbrella organisation that advises regional and often small heritage institutions on all things related to running a cultural institution and maintaining and sharing (digital) collections.

Goals

The purpose of this workshop isː

‘to enable participants to distinguish between material that can and can not be published on the Wikimedia platforms (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource) and to enable participants to consequently make available their data as open data using the platforms.’

Implementation/steps

Defining audience

What kind of institutions are participating and how much do they know about copyright? It makes a difference if the participants work at the institution in a professional capacity or as volunteers (employees in a professional capacity are more likely to have some knowledge about copyrights) In this specific case, the target group are employees of regional heritage institutions, some professionals but also volunteers, with knowledge about copyrights ranging from non-existent to basic. Knowledge of publishing data as open data can also be defined as limited.

If you are unable to assess the knowledge level of your participants, consider inventarising this with a few questions on the registration form you use to let people register for your workshop.

Define purpose & topics

What do you want participants to take away from your workshop, what do you want them to know, what do you want them to be able to do? The purpose of this workshop isː

‘to enable participants to distinguish between material that can and can not be published on the Wikimedia platforms (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata) and to enable participants to consequently make available their data as open data using these platforms.’

Also, the 'hands on' part of the workshop is intended to take away possible barriers participants might have for editing Wikimedia projects by creating a safe environment to experiment in.

The topics that are going to be discussed areː

• copyright regulations in general
• Wikimedia vision & ground rules
• Creative Commons
• Copyright on Wikimedia projects

Consider lightening up the informational part of your workshop by introducing little pop quizzes to check if participants understand the topic. Make sure you use straightforward examples. Since copyright is often a little fuzzy, ambiguous examples can create confusion. You can also add a demonstration of several pictures on Wikimedia Commons with different license information templates. It is also important to show participants step-by-step how to go to Wikimedia Commons, how to find the copyrighted information of several images and where to find all the license tags they need.

Define form

After defining purpose and content of the workshop, think about the form and way of presentation. Is there room for only one session, or can there be multiple? In my experience, several sessions have more of a lasting effect. However, in this specific setting we unfortunately only have room for one workshop focused on copyright and Wikimedia. Therefore, this workshop does not look into possible copyright exceptions that might be of use to participants. If you have the time and your aim is to publish as much data as possible it might also be useful to get an overview of possible exceptions to copyright regulations that apply to the specific country or jurisdiction you operate from, e.g.:

• freedom of panorama
• fair use exceptions
• EU-anonymous regulations
• works made by federal government

In my experience, the informative part of the workshop should be an hour tops for participants to keep focused. The hands on part of our workshop also lasts an hour, and participants are able to work on any Wikimedia related issue they might have. This way, we want to create a platform were they can go to and ask questions and fix outstanding issues.

Invite speaker & coaches

Coach and participants at previous work shop

If you feel like you do not have enough knowledge on copyrights to present the lecture part of the workshop, consider inviting a speaker. In my experience there are a lot of Wikimedians that are very well versed on copyright rules. Also, for the hands on part of the work shop it is great to have a coach that can help out participants when they work. For this workshop, we invited a Wikimedian who was also part of the Dutch OTRS team. This was very helpful because he could share a lot of the experiences he had there and also answer questions participants might have.

Maybe you know Wikimedians that would be interested, or your local Wikimedia Chapter can help out.

If you decide to ask coaches:

• make sure they have your contact information, and you have theirs, in case of unexpected events.
• check if you can reimburse travel expense and let your coaches know what they need to do to get it refunded.
• think about getting a present to thank them for helping out

Location

our participants love stroopwafels

When selecting a venue for your workshop, make sure thatː

• it is centrally located. If people have to travel very far to make it to your event, they are less likely to attend.
• make sure there is good WiFi at the venue, and that you can access and edit the Wikimedia project with it (sometimes on open networks there might be blocks)
• make sure there is a nice snack and drinks for the participants. We always make sure there are stroopwafels available)
• maybe arrange for some Wiki-goodies participants can take with them, e.g. stickers, pens or other things your local Wikimedia chapter might have available.

Invite participants

Send out an invitation for your workshop well in advance (2 months), containingː

• location
• time
• outline of the programme
• your contact infomation
• a registration form or e-mail address people can use to register.
• ask participants to create a Wikimedia user account in case they do not have one yet.

manual for GLAM employees

Think about homework assignments or literature you want the participants to read. For this project, a manual for working with Wikimedia for employees of GLAMs (LINK) was written which contains information about copyrights, commons and PD-licenses tags as well. I ask participants to read this before attending the workshop. Also, participants are asked to think about the sort of collections they would like to publish on Wikimedia. Finally, they are requested to select a public domain image beforehand and take it with them to the workshop. The invitation gives practical examples of public domain work, like old drawings, paintings, or an image they made themselves of a building or landscape. Sent out these homework assignments at least one week in advance, to give people enough time to prepare.

If you have invited a speaker and/or coaches, include them in your messages to the participants.

Contents

CC license spectrum used to illustrated different licenses and usability on Wikimedia

Slides for the workshop

The title of the last copyright workshop that was held in the light of the project was Copyright and open data on Wikimedia. This was the contents of the workshopː

Introduction

• introduction of the goal for the workshop
• short introduction of participants and their reason for participation

Basic definitions of (Dutch) copyright

• work of art, science our literature
• creator(s), 2d and 3d work
• right to publish and copy (economic rights)
• copyright & the internet paradox (examples of online use)
• moral rights
• copyright terms (Europe, U.S.A, international)

Wikimedia

• vision Wikimedia movement
• definition of open data
• contradiction between Wikimedia vision & copyright

Creative Commons

• introduction & goal of CC foundation
• components of CC licenses
• overview of all CC licenses

Use of CC licenses on Wikimedia projects

• Wikipedia = CC-BY-SA 3.0
  • implications
• Wikidata = CC-OO ̆
  • implications
  • how to apply to your website
  • applications (Crotos)
• Wikimedia Commons = > CC̠-BY-SA 3.0
  • overview licensesː CC-BY-(SA), declaratioɲ CC-0 and PD mark
  • asking authors for permission
  • uploading own work (& work made by employees)
  • public domain on Wikimedia Commons

Copyright in your own collection

Round the table, each participant brought an (example) of an object from their collections intended to upload to Wikimedia Commons, and the group discusses if and how it could be uploaded.

Questions & Coffee break -

(Workshop part)ː

Demonstration file index on Wikimedia Commons & license information

• PD-old-auto|Deathyear
• PD-old-70
• PD-old-100
• PD-old-assumed
• Cc-by-sa-4.0

Demo upload Wizard

Practice

Participants work onː

• uploading pictures
• adding categories
• spreadsheets for uploading with Pattypan (advanced participants)

Mentors are available for answering questions.

Follow-up and documentation

After the workshop has finishedː

• share your presentation on Commons. Make sure the images you use are all properly licensed. Also add good categories so it can be found.
• add legible speaker notes to your slides. Participants will very likely want to review your slides and the information that was presented there later on. Also link to further documentation, help pages on Wiki and practical tools (e.g. Creative Commons license-declarations (LINK̠)) they can use when they start working on the subject. You can also consider extracting your notes and creating a seperate hand-out.
• sent out a follow-up email thanking the participants for their participation, inform them were they can find the slides/hand-out and encourage them to contact you should they need help.

We record the lecture part of the work shop on video, so others can view it later on if they want to.

Make sure you add your contact information and links to other places people can go to ask for help when working on the subject to your slides or hand-out.

Register the user names of participants, so you can monitor their progress and register them for global metrics.

Outcomes

Based on the reactions of the participants to the workshop, the workshop providedː

• a general overview of how copyright works
• a general overview of how copyright works on Wikimedia
• a starting point to finding copyright information on the Wiki-projects
• a way point for finding help on Commons with copyright issues
• an idea of what materials can be shared on Wikimedia

Reflection and lessons learned

• leave out exceptions in copyright regulations if your time is limited, because they tend to confuse people(FoP,
• focus only on copyrights on Wikimedia
• do let copyright ghost stories hyack the workshop. In the Netherlands, there have been a couple of cultural institutions being sued for copyright infringement and having to pay hefty fines. Also, most of time a participant that knows somebody who had a similar experience. These stories numb and frighten participants. Try to provide context and perspective to them, so people leave the workshop with a 'can-do' feeling about copyright issues.

Links/resources

• Creative Commons homepage

Link to the video will be uploaded shortly.

More information

For questions about this case study, please contact Michelle van Lanschot.