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Thanks for asking us to come.
I'm going to start.
So, the V&A, who we are, what we're about.
Well, our mission is to be the world's leading museum of art and design,
enriching people's lives by promoting knowledge, understanding
and enjoyment of the designed world.
So what we have, we have just over 2.2 million items in the collection,
1.1 million of which are objects and works of art.
So the rest being books and archives.
We've got a number of national collections
and I won't be able to remember all of them and you probably won't want me to.
But we have collections of jewellery, metalwork, ceramics, glass,
furniture, textiles, performance and Asian art,
and also the national collection of childhood.
And really making those collections accessible, both physically and online,
is really at the heart of our mission.
As a museum with a growing global audience,
the V&A is committed to exploring the potential of digital media
to widen access to its collections
and to deepen its relationship with all its audiences.
This includes maximising free access to our online collections
for the purposes of research, education, creativity and innovation.
At the same time, our trading arm, V&A Enterprises Ltd,
manages the commercial use of the V&A name and assets globally
and generates revenue for the museum.
Rights management lies at the heart
of achieving these equally challenging objectives
and I'll talk to you a little bit more about that in a few minutes.
OK, so where did we start?
In 1999, so about the last 10 to 12 years,
we've been grappling with getting our collections online and how to do that.
1999 was the first project we started called Images Online,
and it put a very small 1,500 of our objects on the website
with images, a very small amount of information,
and it was a relatively static site.
So that site was there for a couple of years
while we worked out how to do it better.
So in 2003, we launched a project called Access to Images,
which started with 10,000 objects on the site,
each with an image, each with a relatively small amount of information.
You can see an example on the screen.
Some core object data and a description.
Each record had an image,
each record was edited in-house
and checked probably about six times before it went online.
So the site grew, but relatively slowly.
So by 2009 we had 56,000 objects and 86,000 images online.
But we wanted to do better still.
And the problem really with that approach was,
because we were asking each record to be checked so many times,
there was a tendency for the cataloguing of the objects to build up
with the work of the museum.
So, say, if we were doing an exhibition or a publication,
we'd catalogue those objects,
and there were areas of the collection that weren't getting online
for one reason or another.
OK, so in 2008, the then director, Sir Mark Jones,
asked us to put the whole object collection online.
So whether it had been catalogued or not, photographed or not,
whatever the state of the information about the collections,
put them online, let's get it out there.
So in 2009, we started a project called Search the Collections.
And that was a collaborative project with staff from around the museum
as well as an external designer called the OTHER media.
So it involved collection departments,
collections management, digital media team,
working together to develop the new site.
And the site itself was actually developed in-house
so that it's more sustainable and we can change and tweak it as we go.
So, 2009, that launched with 1.1 million objects on the site
and 135,000 images.
So this is an example of one of the records.
It's got a lot more information. It's very tiny, I'm afraid.
I was trying to work out how to show you as much as possible on the screen.
But we have a lot more object information, as many images as possible,
but we use search tools to prioritise the richer content.
So whatever the user searches for, they get the richer records first.
And we also have a high-resolution download facility
so that members of the public can download images
subject to our terms and conditions.
(Roxanne) In 12 years, we've come a long way with Search the Collections,
and at the end of last month
the site contained over 1.1 million object records
and over 274,000 images.
The site receives an average of 400,000 visits a month
and 8,000 downloads per month of high-resolution images.
We aim to publish up to 50,000 new images online annually
but this is partly determined by the consent of rights holders.
Where possible, we clear rights from acquiring a new object
and have created a copyright agreement which is designed to be future-proof
and clear rights for any works already forming part of the collections
as well as the current acquisition.
As Ben has already mentioned,
where possible, we are aiming to adopt a touch-once approach to rights clearance.
Given the diversity of our collections,
this can sometimes prove challenging in practice
as we often hold works from multiple rights holders
or where rights holders are unknown.
In some cases, we adopt a risk-managed approach
to deciding what we are able to publish online.
In terms of some of the challenges we have faced,
like many of you here, we are limited by finite resources.
To give you some figures,
one curator has recently spent 78 working days
clearing rights for one acquisition of over 2,000 posters.
We were one of the first museums
to offer high-resolution images for download free of charge.
And in terms of collaboration, we have worked closely with V&A Enterprises
to ensure that our free-access policy and commercial interests are balanced.
We have developed a flexible licensing framework
and we have, for example, reviewed and republished
our terms and conditions on Search the Collections
to ensure they clearly reflect the V&A's commitment to access and reuse
and clearly state what is free and when something should be paid content.
We are also actively considering the use of Creative Commons licences
to enable greater access.
We are working on the next phase of Search the Collections
which will include new interfaces for collections information on all platforms
and we will continue our drive
to share content with other institutions, partners and developers.
We strive to pursue best practice of rights management
and we are currently undertaking a rights management review of the V&A.
This will include implementing clear policies and procedures for staff
to make rights easier to manage and understand
with supporting systems and a programme of training.
The V&A's commitment to respecting the rights of creators
whilst managing its own IP
will allow us to fulfil our dual remit
of optimising free access online and generating income.
- (Anthony) OK? - Yeah.
(Anthony) Thank you very much. Excellent.
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