CT Humanities Licenses Open Access Content on ConnecticutHistory.org Site

Expanding upon its dedication to provide free and open access to trusted digital educational content and resources, CT Humanities will openly license all written content on ConnecticutHistory.org under a Creative Commons License.
 
Using an open Creative Commons license on ConnecticutHistory.org helps CT Humanities ensure that its digital content is free and accessible for anyone wanting to share and learn more about Connecticut’s history.

The license chosen by CT Humanities, known as the CC BY-SA 4.0 license, clearly states that anyone is free to share and adapt the text of ConnecticutHistory.org articles as long as they provide appropriate attribution and license any adaptations under the same license. By using an open license, officials explained, CT Humanities seeks to set an example for other organizations around the state on how cultural content can be made accessible in responsible and thoughtful ways.
 
“CT Humanities has provided free access to public humanities content for decades,” said Dr. Jason Mancini, Executive Director of CT Humanities. “With our new open access initiatives, we are building knowledge about the benefits of open sharing in cultural organizations around Connecticut and setting an example through our projects on how to share knowledge responsibly. We look forward to seeing more Connecticut collections and stories made available to tell a fuller story of our state’s history and culture.”
 
Open and digitized collections allow organizations like museums, historical societies, and art galleries to share their stories more widely and to different audiences. Licensing content or providing copyright information for collection items encourages responsible reuse and sharing of Connecticut’s history and culture, officials point out.
 
To build knowledge and expertise about open access throughout the state, CT Humanities has partnered with Creative Commons, an international nonprofit that empowers people to grow and sustain the thriving commons of shared knowledge and culture, to offer training and resources.

Additionally, to further implement open sharing, CT Humanities is encouraging cultural organizations across the state to take advantage of statewide resources such as Connecticut Collections and the Connecticut Digital Archive, a program of the University of Connecticut Library, to share their own digital content transparently and equitably.
 
Dana Meyer, Connecticut Collections digital projects manager at the Connecticut League of Museums, said this increases visibility, helps better preserve cultural heritage, encourages collaboration among organizations, and broadens “the impact of our collections, ensuring that they are effectively maintained and widely accessible.” Connecticut Collections is a collections management tool for the state’s organizations to use to make archival and museum collections more searchable.
 
Bridgeport’s Housatonic Museum of Art has recently digitized its collection and opened access to its online content. The museum digitized 700 paintings in their collection and worked with Meyer to include their digital collection in the Connecticut Collections platform.

Now, a worldwide audience of students, educators, scholars, researchers, and members of the public can access 7,000+ objects in the Housatonic Museum of Art’s collection. CT Humanities provided partial funding for both the museum and Connecticut Collections to undergo professional development training through the Creative Commons Certificate for Open Culture/GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums).
 
“Everything really coalesced into this really amazing resource,” said Charlotte Lefland, collection manager for Housatonic Museum of Art. “Now we can engage folks who physically cannot get here. It’s a gamechanger – it can be accessed from anywhere, is more accessible, is user friendly. Students can use it for research projects, faculty can use with students, we can now share what we have with the whole world.”
 
Lefland encourages other organizations to reach out to CT Humanities to learn more about the open access certification.
 
“It helped us make sure the museum was doing the right thing with copyright and image use and intellectual property,” she said. “It’s eye opening, and it has made our world much bigger.”
 
Michael Kemezis, director of digital humanities for CT Humanities, said that the CT Humanities Board of Directors adopted an intellectual property policy in fall 2022 for its grants programs because it believes in the positive impact that better sharing humanities content has in building and sustaining vibrant and thriving societies. Open licensing ConnecticutHistory.org through Creative Commons is seen as the next step in CT Humanities’ goal of promoting free sharing and access to Connecticut’s many stories.
 
“I am excited about all the work CT Humanities has done to advance open access in the state over the past several years,” Kemezis said. “We have gone from big ideas to concrete actions by partnering with Creative Commons to provide educational opportunities for employees at cultural institutions. I am extremely proud that we are openly licensing our own content on ConnecticutHistory.org. We will continue to find new ways to advance free access to cultural and historical content.”
 
For more information on ConnecticutHistory.org’s license, open access certification, digitized collections, and more, contact Michael Kemezis, mkemezis@cthumanities.org