Yale University has announced a new open access (OA) policy which will provide scholars, artists and other individuals around the world with free access to online images of millions of objects housed in its museums, archives and libraries. Yale claims to be the first Ivy League university to make its collections accessible in this fashion. More than 250,000 images are already available through a newly developed collective catalogue.
The new policy aims to make high quality digital images of Yale's vast cultural heritage collections in the public domain openly and freely available. As works in these collections become digitised, the museums and libraries will make those images that are in the public domain freely accessible. In a departure from established convention, no licence will be required for the transmission of the images and no limitations will be imposed on their use.
The collections that are held within Yale's museums, archives and libraries are claimed to be among the strongest in depth and breadth of any academic institution in the world. The collections of the Peabody Museum of Natural History encompass over 12 million specimens and objects in 11 curatorial divisions, from anthropology to vertebrate zoology. The Yale University Art Gallery and the Yale Center for British Art hold world-renowned art collections from antiquity to the present. The University is also home to the world's seventh largest library system, with over 10 million volumes and countless manuscripts and documents in 18 libraries, including Sterling Memorial Library and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Increased access to high-quality content and new linked data technologies is expected to revolutionise the way people search and relate to cultural objects. By freely disseminating the reproductions of material heritage in its care, Yale seeks to serve researchers from every academic domain and discipline. It is expected that the researchers will be able to examine individual items online in detail and compare objects from different collections side by side.
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