By Ellie Pridgeon, Consultant at Naomi Korn Associates, and Lead Archivist, 14-18 NOW programme This blog explores some of the key rights management challenges encountered on 14-18 NOW – the UK’s First World War commemoration programme. Based at the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in London, the 14-18 NOW team was supported by Naomi Korn Associates.
By Naomi Korn, Managing Director The Problem Orphan works are works in copyright where the rights holders are either unknown or cannot be traced. Across UK heritage institutions, there are probably hundreds of millions of orphan works, sometimes representing up to 40-50% of collection items[1]. These include photographs, letters, prints, films, sound recordings, plays, broadcasts, […]
By Debbie McDonnell, Senior Consultant I recently enjoyed delivering a talk on how to use digital assets to support your strategy back in October 2020 as part of the #HeritageDigitalNow sessions provided by Heritage Digital, a project funded by The National Heritage Lottery Fund. If you missed it, a recording of the session is available […]
by Amalyah Keshet, Senior Consultant Last May (2020), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) published an international study of 94,675 museums, reporting that 90%, or 86,101 museums had closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and speculating that more than 10% might never open again.[i] More recent research from January of this year […]
By Liz Bowers, Senior Consultant The closure of museums, galleries and other heritage venues for much of 2020 has wiped out their biggest income sources – admissions, exhibition ticket sales, shop and café income and revenue from corporate hospitality and events. Business areas that do not rely on visitor numbers have therefore become ever more […]
By Amalyah Keshet, Senior Consultant There is a fascinating episode of Malcom Gladwell’s podcast “Revisionist History” that begins with the story of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s financial crisis of 2018. The museum, which owns some 2 million items, mostly in remote storage facilities and literally never seen, was for the first time contemplating an […]
By Amalyah Keshet, Senior Consultant The closure – and re-opening and re-closing – of cultural institutions has been severely financially damaging in a number of ways, affecting income, staff, mission, and the visiting public. While many museums have moved online with a remarkable outpouring of creativity, the bottom line has been badly damaged for heritage […]
By Faye Cheung, Researcher Libraries, archives, museums and galleries have a responsibility to safe-guard their collections, including making sure that they are well looked after, preserved, and safe protected from loss and theft (including on site and online). Fortunately, whilst such incidents are relatively rare, famous incidents in libraries include the ‘Transy Book Heist’,[1] or […]
By Amalyah Keshet, Senior Consultant An interesting question came up recently in a museum copyright forum based across the pond. The issue is one that I think has application anywhere one deals with agreements and licences drawn up with artists, authors, and other creators. National legal differences may exist, but it’s still a good example […]
By Matthew Bailey Why it is Important that Cultural Heritage Institutions don’t Get Fixated on an All-or-nothing Approach to the e-Use of Digital Content In a previous blog published by Debbie McDonnell[1], she highlighted the increasing number of UK museums and galleries making digital images available under the terms of open content licences. Most of […]
By Naomi Korn Associates We are very excited to share our new free Online Privacy and Security digital guide created for National Lottery Heritage Fund as part of the Digital Skills for Heritage initiative, designed to raise digital skills and confidence across the UK heritage sector. Heritage organisations find themselves working increasingly online, and the […]
by Maddie Beeson, Projects and Programmes Officer At Naomi Korn Associates we are passionate about sharing knowledge in an accessible and engaging format. During the past few months we’ve been adding lots of new resources to our website which we hope in turn will help support the community, and in particular the shift to home […]
