An experimental exhibition of digital cultural heritage – Display At Your Own Risk – has been launched online to mark World Intellectual Property Day 2016.

The theme of the day, ‘Digital Creativity: Culture Reimagined’, is reflected in the online exhibition organised by researchers from the University of Glasgow-based CREATe - the RCUK Centre for Copyright and New Business Models in the Creative Economy.

Andrea Wallace (University of Glasgow) and Professor Ronan Deazley (Queen’s University Belfast) have created Display At Your Own Risk (http://www.displayatyourownrisk.org) as a celebration of the extraordinary efforts of museums, galleries and archives of international repute in making their collections available online.

They also explore the legal risks and challenges involved in making this digital cultural heritage available to all.

“When a cultural institution creates a digital surrogate of an object from its collection, does the digital surrogate attract copyright protection in its own right? Should museums, galleries and archives regard these digital surrogates as new and independent assets? What does access and user engagement mean in an age where digital collections are becoming increasingly relevant? And how should institutions attempt to regulate user interaction with their digital collections, if at all?”, said Prof. Deazley.

The open source exhibition features 100 digital surrogates (digital copy of an original cultural artifact created for preservation or archival purposes) selected from internationally-renowned institutions around the world, and invites and enables users to curate their own exhibitions as desired. In this way, the researchers hope to encourage multi-exhibition openings with various users around the world, all leading towards the launch of a pop-up version of the online exhibition on June 8 in Glasgow. Simon Tanner, an internationally renowned expert in digital cultural heritage from King’s College London, commented: “This exhibition captures a moment in the transition to openness for digital heritage collections and a welcome point of reflection within the constant flux of digital cultural heritage."

Now in its fourth year of existence, the Centre is also launching a pioneering Masters programme, the MSc in Intellectual Property, Innovation & the Creative Economy (MSc@CREATe), aimed at people working in sectors where digital rights and obligations are a key concern. This executive-level MSc (http://www.create.ac.uk/msc) will equip digital innovators and creative leaders to link complex legal provisions, such as copyright, trademarks, data protection and privacy, to economic analysis and strategic thinking about markets and regulation.

Find out more

• MSc in Intellectual Property, Innovation & the Creative Economy
• CREATe

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First published: 26 April 2016